Apps available to help your students with their college search

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article on apps available that might help your students with their college search.

Here is a quick summary:

  1. The iOS app, Admittedly quizzes users on their preferences for such factors as walkability or weather. (Admittedly recently launched on the web as myOptions.)
  2. The College Fair, a mobile app launched in 2016 under the name Schoold, asks users for academic and personal data, then claims to use Netflix-like algorithms to fine-tune college lists. The app also posts whimsical rankings such as “Beyonce’s Short List” of schools the pop star might like, and “Places Where the Professors Know Your Name.”
  3. An extensive website called BigFuture, by the nonprofit college-planning concern The College Board, has helpful tools linking students’ interests with potential majors, careers and colleges.
  4. Naviance has an app that helps students plan on where to apply to college. The Naviance program, owned by the Cincinnati-based education software company Hobsons, offers a wealth of college- and career-planning tools, but it’s available only to students whose schools subscribe, including about 40% of U.S. public high-school students. It’s well-known for its ‘scatterplots—dot diagrams charting the grades and test scores of students from the same high school who applied to a particular college in the past and showing whether they were admitted. Seeing where your grades and test scores appear in relation to others’ helps students estimate their chances of admission.
  5. A unique website called AdmitSee, founded in 2013 by two law-school students, allows users who buy a monthly subscription to see advice and essays from students currently enrolled at schools of interest.
  6. A free Pittsburgh-based site called Niche posts Yelp-like college reviews and rankings. Users can find students’ answers to questions they might not ask on a campus tour.
  7. Parchment, a site that stores users’ transcripts, test scores and other credentials, creates scatterplots showing admission odds, using data from past Parchment users. But it’s transparent about the reliability of its projections, including a confidence rating based on the past accuracy of its projections for that school, says Matthew Pittinsky, CEO of the Scottsdale, Ariz., company and co-founder of the education software company Blackboard Inc.

The complete article authored by Sue Shellenbarger can be found here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-search-quandary-theres-an-app-for-that-1505832484