Dave Herholz
For many high school students, the fall semester means it’s time to get serious about the college admissions process. While some graduating seniors have a good idea of which school they’d like to attend, many don’t. And even if the student has a stellar academic record and hopes to score an acceptance letter from Harvard or Stanford, it’s never a gaurantee. Grade point averages, SAT scores, extra-curricular activities, application essays – universities have a lot of factors to weigh, and as such, a lot of things that make the application process confusing, particularly when students are urged to apply for their first choice as well as several “back up” schools.
All that confusion and uncertainty probably contributes to the fact that college counseling is a multi-million dollar industry (and that’s excluding the billion-dollar test prep industry).
A couple of new startups — Parchment and Acceptly — have entered the space recently, aiming to help deliver better advice and assistance for high school students and their parents — for free.
Although both the startups offer guidance to students going through the college application process, they each take a different approach. Parchment helps provide data-oriented assessments to help point students towards what it calculates is a good fit, while Acceptly helps students keep Continue reading