Web Site Shows College-Bound
Students Why Others Succeeded
By Aida Luu
More than ever, high school students are seeking college degrees, as increasing value is placed on higher education. The college application process, overwhelming to begin with, is an even more daunting ordeal when factoring in the poor state of the economy.
Those in the know understand that college admission isn’t solely about numbers anymore. Schools place a high emphasis on interests, talents and leadership skills — the human aspects of a well-qualified college candidate that can’t be found in a college statistics book.
After hearing their high school peers wish for a demystified application process, three alumni from the specialized Brooklyn Technical High School class of ’08, Kyle Wong, Charles Naut and Awad Sayeed, launched myCollegeSTAT.com early last year. It has just entered its second beta-testing phase.
MyCollegeSTAT allows users to peer into the profiles of college applicants who have completed all the steps — to see where they applied to college, where they were accepted and what extracurricular activities or achievements individual students had that may have impressed admissions officials.
The idea of myCollegeSTAT (cSTAT) was born after Wong was accepted into his dream school of Stanford University. Many of his high school classmates questioned how he got into this academically competitive school: he had SAT scores below the median range for their acceptance statistics and a decent, but unimpressive GPA. However, people who knew him knew of his personal successes, such as taking advanced placement classes, playing on the JV basketball team and his entrepreneurial spirit.
Wong enlisted two of his closest friends, Naut and Sayeed, to co-found this online college counseling web site. Both were ideal partners for Wong, because despite their young age, they each have extensive backgrounds in computer science. Naut is finishing his freshman year and pursuing a computer science degree, also at Stanford, and Sayeed is majoring in political science and philosophy at Baruch College. They both intend to pursue business.
All three have long had entrepreneurial aspirations. Co-CEOs Wong and Sayeed have also founded a non-profit, the Young Entrepreneur Association (YEA), which seeks to teach entrepreneurship at a high school level, instilling business ideas while encouraging charitable deeds.
“The college admissions process today is way too opaque,” says Sayeed. “It is very much like throwing a dart and hoping it sticks. We hope that by being a repository for college admissions data we can at least somewhat help students gain an edge while making one of the most important decisions of their lives.”
Wong, a Bay Ridge native, says cSTAT is a resource he wished he’d had when applying to college.
“We’re trying to show high school students that there is no ‘magic formula’ that will guarantee their admittance to a specific college,” he says. “A perfect GPA or SAT score isn’t required for acceptance into a competitive college. Extracurricular activities, accomplishments and personal character are also key factors.”
“We are imparting information about diversity and financial aid and scholarships,” says Naut, from Williamsburg, officially the VP of Technology for cSTAT. “We are providing a free service that is helping students and bridging the gap between low and high-income students.”
This small startup has shown promise. It was the first place winner for the Junior Achievement New York City Business Plan Competition, hosted by Columbia University, in 2008. Since its launch, cSTAT has grown to 1,000 users and its second BETA phase has more innovative features and user-friendly design. They are preparing to launch a subscription service to high schools.
Director of Operations, Dolly Li, has just completed her first year at NYU’s Stern Business School. She adds, “cSTAT is free, and offers the same services and material at a fraction of private counseling costs.”
“As colleges continue to decrease admission rates, it is increasingly important for college applicants to learn what helped their predecessors gain admissions to college.”
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