Chichia School Admission Portal
Full-Stack System
01 — Project Overview
End-to-end digital admission system for a regional school, replacing a 100% paper-based process with a secure, bilingual web platform.
Solo Developer — requirement gathering, database design, frontend, backend, and security hardening.
Stack
02 — The Problem
Goal
Replace the school's paper admission process entirely with a digital system that works for both students and administrators.
User Issue
Families in rural Assam found the paper process error-prone and time-consuming. Administrative staff spent weeks sorting and filing physical documents.
03 — The Process
Bilingual Interface
Designed both English and Assamese language modes, ensuring the system was accessible to parents with limited English literacy.
Sandboxed Admin Panel
Admin panel is accessible only from the local network (WAMP server), providing an air-gap layer of security against remote attacks.
Input Sanitization
Built custom PHP middleware for SQL injection prevention and file upload validation, since the school has no dedicated security team.
Key Challenge
Designing a relational schema that handled multi-child families, guardian data, and conditional document uploads without data redundancy.
// PHP CSRF & Age Verification Middleware
$csrf = trim($_POST['csrf_token'] ?? '');
if (!validate_csrf($csrf)) {
send_json(['success' => false, 'error' => 'Invalid or expired form token.'], 403);
}
$dob_ts = strtotime($dob_raw);
$age_years = (time() - $dob_ts) / (365.25 * 24 * 3600);
if ($age_years < 4 || $age_years > 22) {
send_json(['success' => false, 'error' => 'Age must be between 4 and 22.'], 400);
}04 — The Solution
A fully deployed bilingual admission portal that digitized the school's entire intake pipeline. Students apply online, upload documents, and receive a tracking ID for status updates.
05 — Results & Learnings
Impact
Reduced the school's admission processing time by an estimated 70%. Eliminated manual document filing and data transcription errors.
Learnings
Learned how to gather requirements from non-technical stakeholders and translate ambiguous paper workflows into concrete database schemas.
What I'd do differently
Would add an SMS notification system via Twilio so parents receive real-time status updates without needing to visit the school.