Keeping track of grades and staying on top of assignments is one of the biggest causes of stress for students, and can be overwhelming. With this in mind, the third party Grade Melon website offers tools that can help students by allowing them to input hypothetical scores on assignments to reduce stress and know where they stand in a class.
For those of you that have been using Grade Melon for years, you probably noticed that Grade Melon was down for a stretch of 2024. This is because Synergy made changes to the API that broke Grade Melon. An API is what allows two different software applications to communicate with each other, so the change required a lot of work to fix. According to Grade Melon’s website, the creator of Grade Melon, Tinu Vanapamula, was a graduating senior and had other priorities at the time.
Later in 2024, Whitman student Jonathan Shapiro fixed the issue by copying the open source code and trying different solutions until it worked, and he has been running the website ever since. Shapiro recalls originally learning python in sixth grade, but he lost interest for a while at the end of seventh grade. “Reviving Grademelon was my first big project,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro undertook this massive project with little help. Even though he has to keep the website up himself, he describes it not being big updates and changes anymore. “I run and develop Grade Melon pretty much entirely myself. Nowadays that mostly just means fixing bugs and maintaining the existing code,” Shapiro said.
Grade Melon is not that different from Synergy, but students enjoy Grade Melon more due to the student-friendly features. Using an aesthetically pleasing color scheme and features that Synergy doesn’t have, Grade Melon soars far over Synergy. “It’s pretty simple honestly. All it does differently is that it presents that data in a more useful way and with extra features like calculating future assignments,” Shapiro said.
Students agree that the best feature of Grade Melon is that it allows students to physically enter hypothetical scores to see how it can impact their overall grade. Instead of having to guess what their final grade of a class would be, students can easily enter any points, only having to specify the number of points and the type of assignment (practice prep or all tasks). “I use Grade Melon every day in school to check my grades. My favorite feature about Grade Melon is being able to change grades and add assignments, which helps you see how that assignment affects your overall grade,” junior Alexander Mirzoian said.
Students have praised the durability of Grade Melon compared to Synergy. With the exception of 2024, it has almost never been down, while Synergy has undergone multiple updates throughout the year. “I like that it doesn’t really break; Synergy always has problems so this is a consistent solution to Synergy. I love Grade Melon, and would 100% recommend it to anyone,” junior Aaron Dubelman said.
Though it is working right now, the future of Grade Melon remains uncertain. Since Shapiro graduates this year, he does not know if he will have time to keep working on Grade Melon. “I can’t really see myself still working on it a year from now. I think I’d like to hand it off to someone before then,” Shapiro said.
