

Rate my Startup - CollegeSolved - csdrizzle

Hi everybody!<p>Launched the full version in Sept after some initial beta testing.<p>http://www.collegesolved.com/<p>Three separate channels:<p>1) College search is hard: so we created the Kayak of college search.  The search tool is an easy way for prospective college students to narrow down their list and research colleges.  Once they have a manageable list, they can create an account to manage the application process.  It's a crowded space and we've separated ourselves by building a better search and including content not available anywhere else, including graduate salary data and a personality wheel for individual colleges based on surveys completed by college students.  Users can get a sense for what students on campus are like, whether they trend Social, Scholarly or Indie.  High school users love this feature in testing.  You can also tap your LinkedIn (parents) and Facebook (HS students) profiles to see if you know any current students or on thousands of college campuses.<p>2) Getting the real scoop is harder:  so we built a searchable network of 1,110+ college students on over 260 campuses across the country.  Prospectives can search by college, interests (newspaper, ROTC, athletics, Greek life) and connect with a college student to get the real scoop.  After filling out some profile info, the first call/email is free.  We’ve built a private, secure backend scheduling, call and email system to facilitate connections.<p>3) Getting in is the hardest: so we took a totally fractured industry, private college counseling, and aggregated the best in the business.  We partnered with IECA, the Independent Educational Consultants Association, to offer up the best consultants, as the market is ripe with marketing-heavy, results-light advisors.  So, if I’m a student in Portland, Oregon who wants to go to Harvard I can search for a former Harvard admissions officer to help with my application process.  I don’t have to use the counselor down the street that my friend recommended.<p>Any thoughts about UX, level of usefulness, and ways to reach high school students would be appreciated.  Less interested in feedback on revenue model at this point, looking for thoughts on UX and distribution. Thanks!
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jefflinwood
Clickable link: <http://www.collegesolved.com/>

First of all, I hope this takes off! You guys have done a lot of work to
assemble all of the students and college data.

Some suggestions:

1) The UI is really cluttered, because I think you are trying to do
everything! Have you considered going through and doing a UI/UX revamp? For
instance, some of your buttons in the College Search use serif fonts, and some
use sans serif. I'd suggest using more whitespace, and using more of a grid-
based layout to line up columns.

2) Is your target audience mostly on Facebook? You should make parts of this a
Facebook app and/or otherwise add ways to let high school students share this
on Facebook.

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csdrizzle
First of all, thank you for your thoughts!

1) Clarity of message is certainly something we're trying to focus on. We're
always looking at ways to revamp.

2) Target audience is absolutely on Facebook. There will be an app for sure!
Viral loop, right...

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stfu
Very interesting project!

One suggestion: I am not that keen on the stock photography. Would be great if
you could use "real" photos for example for the admission expert

More of a question: How did you decide to partner with the IECA? It seems to
me that the college consulting market is very messed up looking from the
outside. Limiting your choice to one provider might seem a bit odd. If you
would stay more independent you could probably expand into evaluating the
success rates of different consultants through your users.

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csdrizzle
Noted on the stock photos. Not all of our counselors need to be IECA members.
It's a great way for us to confirm quality, because they are the gold
standard. There's 1,000 IECA members (not all are in our network) so there's
not a supply/demand issue at this point. Thank you

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rprospero
Already went through undergrad, but I was curious where it would have told me
to go. It was telling me Princeton or Yale. That wouldn't have ended well.

What I found interesting was that my alma mater, Purdue, wasn't listed in my
searches. I spent forever messing around with the search parameters until I
figured out that it was blocking me on SAT scores. I'm guessing that you're
matching against average scores of admitted students?

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pw
Have you thought much about the SEO? It seems like that's a big distribution
channel for you competitors (Collegeboard, Cappex, CollegeProwler).

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csdrizzle
We get some decent organic pickup from Google searches but are looking for
some SEO tactics and pagerank boost - we're a 4/10 now and the competition
seems to be a 6/10 - any recommendations would be much appreciated!

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pw
Might be good to resubmit this another day. I think everyone who could be, is
at Startup School (or the after-parties, now).

