STEMBridge Non-Profit Organization

My Role in STEMBridge

My Motivation

When I was in high school planning out university applications, I noticed that every university, faculty, and program had its own method of admission. It was a pain and took me months to navigate and understand all the requirements along with extracurricular activities (e.g., math contests, clubs, etc.) that would help with admission. Throughout the process, I had to navigate myself through the sea of misinformation and slowly plan out my strategies for each program. Through all my efforts, I successfully got into almost all the programs I applied for. However, I believed high school students such as myself should have had a clear understanding of what each university program was about and the requirements, both hard skills and soft skills, required/recommended for admission. From this experience, I was determined to help upcoming high school students overcome this challenge.

My Action

Fast forward to the summer of 2025, after the chaotic first year of iBioMed, I finally got time to relax and start thinking about my idea. I contacted two of my friends who decided to support my idea. Through some infrequent communications throughout the summer, we finally had a plan by September 2025. We co-founded a startup called STEMBridge to guide students through university applications with the vision of the organization being: “helping every high school STEM student in Ontario to better understand the requirements of universities/programs and what they offer". Created by the students and for the students, STEMBridge have key highlights that differenciate us from other companies.

Technical Implementation

Specifically, I planned to organize free online guest lectures (university students, professors, STEM professionals, etc.) to explain what their program offered along with the specific requirements for admission such as the kind of skills/experiences they were looking for in students. Program directors, professors who had interesting research, and current students were our primary targets for outreach across all universities/faculties. To incentivize the guest speakers, our organization offered them compensation while using these events to advertise our paid services such as tutoring (Math, Programming, 3D modelling, etc.) and university application interview practice lessons. Since profit was not the primary consideration, we could tutor students at a very customer-friendly price (e.g., $25–30 per class). With affordability on our side, this advertising process along with other forms of advertising such as guest speakers to local high schools should quickly attract customers and we would manage to break even by the end of 2025.

As it turns out, the plan worked even better than expected and our inbox was overflooded after a visit to my high school. As of December 2025, not only have STEMBridge breakeven, we have also raised over $500. Additionally, the programming lesson was especially popular to a point where I have to hire more volunteers to meet the overwhelming demand. Students have demonstrated strong interests in programming as I designed the course to be interesting and fun. As shown in the above image (the 3rd image / .gif), I have incorportated lessons that teach students how to design a video game.

Future Steps and Reflection

Looking ahead, I plan to expand STEMBridge by increasing our consulting services, developing structured curriculum for more courses, and increasing our volunteer team. I am working to build a curriculum for advanced programming while preparing to recruit former students as future instructors. Additionally, I reached out to a second-year student at the University of Pennsylvania who is interested in volunteering with us and forming an international branch of university application consulting (already underway and should be up and running in no time). Opportunities like this allows both me and STEMBridge to grow.

Expert Quotation

Quotation

Edward Gao

STEMBridge Co-Founder / Co-President

STEMBridge continues to grow today! With over 10 clients and growing, we are on track of raising $5000 by fiscal year 2026 (October 1st, 2026).