Data geeks. Sticklers for great customer experiences.
Champions for student sanity. Secret weapon for counselors.
What we do
College Kickstart is your essential companion for savvy college planning. Using the latest admissions data, we make it easier to craft winning college plans that are well balanced, maximize odds and minimize wasted motion. Given a list of schools a student has in mind and their academic credentials, we’ll help you analyze the list for balance, capitalize on early admission opportunities, and prepare an action plan to avoid unnecessary work and cost.
Unlike other solutions, College Kickstart looks across multiple sources for the most current and critical admissions data, delivers personalized recommendations for each student based on their list and academic credentials, and dynamically updates each time the list or credentials change.
For counselors, it frees up time to do what you do best: advise.
For students and parents, it puts some sanity into the process.
For everyone, it’s a great way to avoid surprises, set realistic expectations, and stay on track.
How we help
With your list of colleges under consideration and academic profile, College Kickstart builds a sensible plan and helps you:
• Avoid surprises and use the most current admissions data pulled across multiple sources with an eagle eye on the stats with the biggest impact on admissions.
• Set realistic expectations with a well-balanced college plan and automatically categorize schools by safeties, targets, reaches and unlikelies.
• Improve the college list mix and find schools in each category that best match a student's academic performance with admission selectivity.
• Maximize the odds of admission with an early admissions strategy that encompasses the latest early admit stats, rules and deadlines.
• Simplify the complexity of managing changes and dynamically update the college plan every time a student’s list or academic profile changes.
• Whether you are advising 10 students or 100 students, tailor every plan to reflect each student's goals and profile.
• Reduces wasted motion, stress and application fees with action plans that sequence the work ahead.
• Works the way you work (student powered, counselor powered, combo)
How we started
College Kickstart for Students and Parents was launched September, 2013, and the Counselor Edition was launched January, 2016.
It all started for founder George Fan as a passion project run amok. George is a MIT-trained entrepreneur with deep Silicon Valley roots who happens to be the parent of two teens, both of whom recently went through the college admissions process. College Kickstart is the direct result of lessons learned from that experience and feedback from a great group of students, parents and college counselors. We're on a mission to enable students and parents to navigate the college admissions "circus" with greater clarity and confidence, and give counselors the ability to more easily manage expectations along the way.