Two Penn Alumni Create Social Network For College Admissions
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Hoping to bring transparency to the college admission process, two friends armed with law degrees from the University of Pennsylvania have created a social network similar to LinkedIn, but for students.
Lydia Fayal and Stephanie Shyu came up with the idea for AdmitSee while they were law students at Penn. But Shyu says it really stemmed from their personal frustrations with the application process.
"We decided to come up with this database where college and grad students can share their application information that got them successfully admitted," she says, "and also share their personal insights about the process."
Around 50,000 students who are enrolled in about 800 colleges have shared both their high school records and college applications, including full essays on AdmitSee.
Shyu says what makes AdmitSee unique is not just its ability to connect students, but there is also a big data portion.
"We're actually able to look at the information in the aggregate and really analyze different trends as it relates to admission and decision making," she says. "So one thing we looked at was the tone formality of essays that were successful at different schools, or you can also use our data to look at if an applicant is admitted to two different, which one are they likely to choose and why."
Applicants can purchase access to the site though a subscription plans and Admitsee splits the revenue with the college students who have shared their information.
