thedegreetracker.com

What It Is

TheDegreeTracker is a cloud-based degree planning and requirements tracking tool created by Harvard Extension School students for HES students, operated by Mid-South Web Development, LLC. It focuses on helping students plan complex paths from enrollment to graduation, including ALB, ALM, minors, double minors, certificates, and more. The site states that it is not affiliated with any public or private university.

Core Features

The core product brings course planning, degree requirements, and completion progress into a single dashboard. Users can plan future courses by semester, date, and hours; see which requirements each course can satisfy; and distinguish between “planned” and “completed” requirements. It also supports tracking fields of study, minors, certificates, and double-counted requirements, and provides GPA eligibility forecasting, requirement-completion badges, and a bird’s-eye progress overview. Course reviews are another key feature: students can search reviews, create reviews based on student-designed criteria, and contact past reviewers who have opted to be contacted.

Pricing and Deployment

The website clearly mentions a subscription model and offers a 1-week free trial, but it does not disclose specific pricing, plan differences, or billing cycles. It is deployed as a cloud-based web application, is mobile-friendly, stores data in the cloud, and says the system is backed up hourly. Payment-related information references Stripe account access, and the site also includes a donation option.

Security, Integrations, and Collaboration

The privacy policy says appropriate security measures are taken to prevent unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction, and that users may request access to, correction of, deletion of, or cessation of processing of their data. However, it does not specify the types of personal data collected, nor does it disclose compliance certifications such as SOC 2, ISO, FERPA, or GDPR. The only third-party integration explicitly mentioned is Stripe; there is no information about APIs, webhooks, SSO, permission roles, or audit logs. Collaboration is reflected more in course reviews, contacting reviewers, and community knowledge sharing than in enterprise-grade team collaboration.

Pros, Cons, and Best Fit

Its main advantage is its highly focused use case: it addresses HES-specific pain points such as complex degree requirements, varied course attributes, and parallel tracking of minors and certificates in a more structured way than a standard spreadsheet. Its limitations are its narrow applicability, limited disclosure around pricing and enterprise-grade capabilities, and the fact that it is not an official school system. It is best suited for HES students, especially those who need to plan courses years in advance, maximize course-selection flexibility, and prepare for conversations with an advisor.

Access from China

The main site does not provide information about access from mainland China, RMB payments, or localization, so access status is unknown. Users in China who only need similar planning functionality could consider official school academic systems, Excel/Google Sheets, Notion templates, or self-built spreadsheets as alternatives.