Currently in private beta, Applyful is a collaborative college selection platform, designed for college applicants to collect and share information with one another on the road to choosing a college. As applicants use Applyful to manage research during the application process, Applyful surfaces trends and insights to encourage more informed decision-making, while developing peer groups to offer support and broaden one another’s horizons.
The Career Connect app is a partnership between ConnectEDU, a technology company committed to connecting the world’s learners to life’s possibilities through clear education-to-career pathways, and CareerVillage, an edtech venture that creates social games that prepare students for careers. The Facebook app creates a forum for students to get answers to their college and career planning questions by leveraging their social network. Questions are searchable by any topic and multiple app users can respond to each question.
Beyond 12 is a technology-based service organization dedicated to increasing the number of underserved students who graduate from college. Our new app – CoachMe – will provide college students with automated alerts delivered to their mobile devices and Facebook accounts to help them keep track of key deadlines. Students will be rewarded, in the form of badges, for completion and mastery of certain tasks and skills, and will be able to share their successes, challenges and key lessons learned with their support network and peers. Ultimately, CoachMe will bridge the “information gap” and help students master the activities, behaviors and habits that increase their success in college – and beyond.
The Chronicle of Higher Education recently announced that College Abacus has given net price calculators “the Kayak treatment”; much as Kayak.com created the “search one and done” experience for travel, College Abacus is the free one-stop search for comparing higher education pricing. Now available in Spanish and English, College Abacus allows college-bound students and their families to search and compare net prices – tuition and fees minus grant aid – across more than 2500 schools (and counting).
College Connect will provide high school students with a compelling visualization of their Facebook network. By identifying individuals likely to be valuable resources of college-related information and scaffolding the process of information-seeking, College Connect will be especially useful for first generation students as they build social capital around the college-going process. The app will be developed and evaluated by Bernie Hogan (Oxford Internet Institute), Christine Greenhow (Michigan State University), and Nicole Ellison (University of Michigan).
The College Board is a not-for-profit membership organization whose mission is to connect students to college opportunity and success. The College Board’s “CollegeGo” mobile app is an interactive college action plan that puts under-served students on the path to college enrollment by helping them explore the key components of effective college planning: academics, career discovery, college exploration, paying, and applying. The app takes a step-by-step approach through the process, visualizes student progress, and includes a built-in support and encouragement system.
The College People LLC a Pittsburgh based company started by former higher education administrator Wahab Owolabi and Carnegie Mellon University engineering student Neil Soni with the mission of creating software to increase college access and provide tools for education administrators. Their first product CollegeZen.com is a community centered web application that simplifies the college search, decision, and funding process while enhancing the experience for prospective students and parents with the belief that there is a perfect college for every student.
Developed by 10,000 Degrees and Nuvana, this app will employ a socially networked gaming framework to deliver proven college success curriculum to low-income students and their families. With the vision to leverage peer networks and project based learning with the draw and rewards of a game, and to bridge information and action so that all students have access to the information and support they need to access and succeed in higher education.
The NerdScholar FAFSA Community App will create a Facebook-enabled support network of students, parents, and administrators. This resource will aim to increase the FAFSA completion rate among low income and first-generation college students. By promoting a social community and the support of a peer network, NerdScholar aims to improve financial literacy and enable any student to achieve their college goals. NerdScholar is a service of NerdWallet, empowering students to make better decisions about their higher education.
FastForward helps high school students, community college students and any college student struggling with their future plans to: visualize potential career paths; develop personalized college/career action plans; and locate resources for taking action. FastForward puts the student in the context of various career paths, using their own photos and Facebook timeline as a starting point for exploration, discovery and planning of careers. Unigo adds FastForward to its growing collection of tools, www.unigo.com, one of the largest college resources on the web.
The WOOP app will use a cognitive strategy called Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan or WOOP to help students achieve the goal of attending and graduating from high school and college. The app will take teenagers’ existing attitudes conducive to behavior change and provide an interactive framework for overcoming obstacles. By generating personalized action strategies, the app’s content will help low income teens to navigate the transition from high school to college, and provide support so they succeed in college.
GradGears’ mission is to increase completion rates among community college students and accelerate their path to completion. We build student-centered products that increase retention, reduce drop-out rates, and accelerate students’ academic success. Our first product is GradGuru, your community college advisor in your pocket. Through earning badges, GradBadge helps enrolled community college students more easily understand and learn from their peers what behaviors lead to faster completion. GradBadge leverages the GradGuru platform, Mozilla Open Badges and Facebook.
Center for Student Opportunity (CSO) is a national nonprofit empowering first-generation college students on the path to and through college. Our I’m First project (http://beta.imfirst.org) is collecting pledges and stories from first-generation college graduates—and students who will be—to inspire the next generation of students who will be first. The I’m First web application will feature tools and resources to help aspiring first-generation college students and their supporters take the steps necessary to pursue and succeed in college.
Logrado is a social-mobile guidance system to support students in accessing, persisting in and completing college. Students use their mobile phone or Facebook to access interactive missions that guide them through critical steps in preparing for college. Missions leverage Facebook as students collaborate with peers and form personal success teams of family, mentors and friends for encouragement. Logrado enables schools and college access programs to improve the quality and scale of guidance, communication and individualized support for low-income and first generation students.
PossibilityU is an online program designed to help students find the college that fits – academically, socially and financially. Our blended learning curriculum and data driven tools are designed to give context to the $1 Million decision that each high school student makes, often with less than 1 hour of individual guidance. We use technology to personalize each students search, to visualize important trade-offs in the process, and to persuade them to stay on time/on track.
Raise Labs is rethinking how college scholarships are accessed and distributed, particularly for low-income and first-generation college students. The Raise platform enables high school students to earn “micro-scholarships” towards college starting in 9th grade based on their individual achievements and progress towards graduation. Raise helps students pursue their college ambitions with confidence and adds transparency to the scholarships process.
Tractus Insight enables all college bound students to develop highly individualized college application lists. It’s like harnessing the power of multiple guidebooks, a college counselor who knows you well, and the suggestions of those you trust into a single app. Insight gives students, families, and counselors the power to discover and research colleges that are a strong personal fit.
Transfer Bootcamp is an online guidance application for students seeking to transfer from community college to a four-year university. We build a plan for each student to help them identify their unique goals, graduate from community college on time, select the right courses for transfer and to better understand their financial aid options. Transfer Bootcamp will eliminate the confusion of community college transfer and make higher-education accessible for millions of students.
Roadtrip Nation started in 2001 when a group of friends took a Roadtrip with this simple idea: talk to people who do what they love, and you’ll get a better understanding of how to build a life you love. What started as a Roadtrip sparked a documentary series, live campus events, a video archive of hundreds of interviews, and most recently, curricula and resources to help at-risk students in disadvantaged communities gain access and exposure to life pathways. Roadtrip Nation’s latest endeavor, “What’s Your Road?”, is a virtual roadtrip experience (in Facebook) where youth explore pathways aligned with their aspirations and connect with mentors in those fields.
Get Schooled is a non-profit that engages and motivates students using the media, technology and popular culture integral to their lives. It has designed Zombie College, an app that will be as entertaining as it is educational. The game has a low barrier to entry – no complex instructions – and is played in short bursts. The twist? The Zombie College game map is the college going map. Students will continually play the game because it is an “addicting game”, while internalizing the key steps to go to college.