Why Three Routes exists

A trade, a diploma and a degree on the same page, with the same numbers, for the family kitchen table.

Every Ontario student already has a career tool at school. Most still finish Grade 12 with no idea what to do. The problem was never a shortage of information. It was that nobody put a trade, a diploma and a degree on the same page with the same numbers, in language a family can argue with.

What version 1 does

Three things. Seven questions about real constraints (grades, money, time, what your parents expect) produce three options that feel fair. A skilled trade sits next to a degree with identical columns, so what a student considers gets wider, not narrower. And a one-page summary written for parents can be sent to parents with one tap.

Version 1 also introduces students who want it to employers, unions and programs in their region, and keeps a public record of how those partners treat young workers. Features get added when students and parents say they are needed, not before.

Why every number has a date

A confident wrong salary shown to a seventeen-year-old is worse than no salary at all. Every figure here is a sourced, dated number from Job Bank, Statistics Canada, provincial wage surveys, student aid and institution fee pages, rounded so the comparison stays readable. The Data page shows the status of every pathway; a pathway only turns "verified" when every number on it has a source and a date, and the rest are marked "partly verified" until they do. Nothing is scraped from college websites.

What we collect, and why

Your quiz answers stay on your device unless you choose to leave your email. They're used only to rank the options you see.
Your email, if you give it, is used to tell you when the verified version launches and to ask what we got wrong. It is never sold or shared. Students under 18 are asked for a parent's email instead of their own.
Your feedback is the roadmap. Every "this is missing" or "this number looks off" gets read by a person.
Usage (which cards get opened, how many parent pages get shared) is counted without identifying anyone.

You can ask for anything we hold about you to be deleted at any time by emailing [email protected].

Who's behind it

An IT professional in Milton, Ontario, with fourteen years of building and running systems for large organisations. The decision a seventeen-year-old makes about what comes after Grade 12 is one of the biggest in a family's life, and the help on offer was a glossy brochure from each college and a guidance appointment that lasts fifteen minutes. So this got built on evenings and weekends: every route in the same columns, the downside printed on the card, and the numbers checked by hand against the sources.

Three Routes is independent and unfunded. It is not affiliated with any college, university, union or school board, nobody can pay to be recommended, and there are no ads. If a number is wrong, [email protected] reaches a person who will fix it.

Try it See the data plan

Credits

Illustrations by Storyset. Wage and outlook data from Job Bank, Statistics Canada and the provincial sources listed on the data page.