CollegeApps.com
Identify financial aid opportunities, create actionable plans, and explore prospective colleges for free
Upon registering, College Apps will identify scholarship and financial aid opportunities based on personal, academic, and professional information collected in the onboarding questionnaire. Sample scholarship data for listed schools was last collected October 31, 2017
The College Apps Backpack Create Actionable Agendas
Add scholarships, prospective schools, and other to-dos to your Backpack. The Backpack pre-populates fields such as deadlines and allows you to create agendas to see how far along you are in the admissions process. Set personal deadlines and create reminders to help keep yourself in check and ahead of the curve.
Inspiration
Inspired by students who “simply felt lost” during the college application process, not knowing deadlines, and specific steps to take to apply for scholarships and schools.
Key Features
Create and Stick to Personal Deadlines
Get customized reminders via email and text message to stay on track and meet deadlines.
Curate Actionable Schedules
Import prospective colleges and scholarships and see breakdown of required action items.
Deadline
Your personal deadline for FAFSA was 8 days ago.
If you have completed it, please login and change the status in your dashboard.
Reminder
Your University of Michigan application is due in 8 days.
Your personal deadline for this action is by 11:59 PM tonight.
ToDo
Submit finalized resume to Babson College
8 days left
Reminder
Your University of Pennsylvania Early Decision Application is due in 7 days.
Your personal deadline for this action is by 11:59 PM tonight.
ToDO
QuestBridge National College Match application
5 day left
Backpack
This is a customized message that you wrote to yourself when creating your schedule to keep you on track and motivated. You can do it!
The College Apps Network
A College Social Network
The College Apps Network fills the gap between students and their prospective colleges. Students can view directories of students who attended their prospective schools and contact them to hear first-hand experiences. Admissions counselors can hold virtual sessions to answer questions from prospective students. Finally, students work in solidarity to motivate each other with the ability to see the progress of their peers and how they stack up.
Inspiration
Inspired by students who are the first in their families to attend college and do not know of any family members or peers to contact at their prospective schools. Students with lower incomes who attend lower performing schools in cities like Detroit are often looked over by admissions counselors who travel school to school.
Key Features
Admission Counselor Sessions
Admissions counselors can hold virtual sessions to answer any questions and provide more information to prospective students.
Local Peer Network
Opt to view the progress of other students by sharing your own. Stay motivated, see your relative progress, and find points of contact for other students applying to the same schools or programs locally.
Alumni Directory
Directory of alumni who are willing to be contacted with questions uploaded by authorized school representatives or volunteered manually.
Hanson So
Babson College Alum
Prathik Hosalli
University of Michigan (Ross) Alum
About The Mission
Words From Our Founder
My name is Yashar Ghaffarloo and I attend the #1 ranked school in the state of Michigan.
A 20 minute drive from the International Academy, however, brings you to the city of Detroit where some of the nation’s worst ranked learning facilities are located, ridden with mold, mice, and other safety hazards.
The expectation at International Academy from 9th grade is that students will graduate and attend college. At Detroit, Flint, and Hamtramck schools, however, the focus is on getting students out of the school and not into a further learning institution. While students at these schools qualify for scholarship, financial aid opportunities, and have access to other resources, they are of no use because these students do not have knowledge of them.
College guidance counselors are nonexistent, and, rather, counselors deal with triage of crisis such as violence, drug abuse, and homelessness, with no room for college guidance and planning a course of action after high school.
The recommended counselor workload from the ACA is 250:1, but the average in Michigan 717:1, the second highest in the nation. The idea of CollegeApps.com was inspired by meetings with students, teachers, and my counselor to identify pain points for students during the college application process and create a portal for students to identify financial aid opportunities that they may qualify for, but are unaware of, create actionable schedules to keep themselves in check, and learn more about their prospective schools with access to college guidance counselors and alum at their prospective schools on tap.
While CollegeApps.com is still in the works, I hope to have a usable platform in time for the application process for current juniors.
