<![CDATA[Choosing a study program is a strategic decision that twelfth-grade students must make before continuing their education to higher education. At SMAN 1 Padang Panjang, this process is still carried out conventionally through consultation with the Guidance and Counseling (BK) teacher without the support of quantitative calculation, so the recommendations given are subjective and not necessarily consistent for students with similar profiles. This study aims to design a web-based decision support system that can provide study-program recommendations objectively and measurably by applying the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. A Research and Development (R&D) approach was used with the Waterfall model, from the Requirements Analysis to the Maintenance stage. The system was built using the PHP programming language with the Laravel framework and a MySQL database, processing 25 study-program alternatives and four benefit criteria: Academic Ability (C1), Interest and Talent (C2), Academic and Non-Academic Achievement (C3), and Graduate Employment Prospects (C4), weighted 0.40, 0.30, 0.20, and 0.10 respectively as determined by the BK teacher as the expert. So that the recommendations are personal, each student's decision matrix is formed through a Suitability Score calculation before being processed with TOPSIS. Test results show a validity value of 0.92 (valid), a practicality value of 0.91 (very high), and an 80.00% agreement rate with the counsellor’s recommendations (accurate category) on 15 test cases. The developed system is thus proven valid, practical, and accurate for use as a tool for BK teachers and students.]]>
