The Birth of a Revolution - Kollegio News Letter #1
I’ve been on this waitlist for like- literally forever”- everyone on the waitlist. Yes, we hear you, and we are well aware. The first 300 students will be taken off the waitlist this week! To guarantee yourself a spot refer 5 friends and have them put in your name as a referral.
Super excited for everyone to get to check out Kollegio!
-Senan, Co-Founder Kollegio
This Week’s Stories:
1. Kollegio’s SuperHero Origin Story
2. Do Private Counselors Skew Admissions?
3. This Week in Higher Education #1
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Kollegio’s Super Hero Origin Story
Hi, I’m Senan. Co-founder of Kollegio, a platform that I hope will change your life. Maybe not just your life but your children’s, your students', your sibling’s, and your friends'- you get the idea.
I’m an international Stanford student, graduating in a month, 8000 miles away from my hometown of Karachi, Pakistan. Despite the distance, I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity. More than just having the privilege of graduating from one of the best institutions in the world, I also have the opportunity to work on a cutting edge technologically driven platform aimed at making the world a better and fairer place.
You see, after my admission to Stanford- I was acutely aware of an unfair advantage I had throughout the admissions process. My private college counselor. My private college counselor, although ethical, helped me understand what admissions committees look for in applications, an unfair advantage that those who without helpful counselors can simply not attain. In California alone, the average student-to-counselor ratio is 400:1, and the average private counselor price? $5000. It's completely, utterly, and totally unfair.
So what could I do? A newly minted Stanford student is more concerned with getting through TSA unscathed than changing the world. I did begin an affordable human counseling service of my own that I ran for over three years, doing my best to help low-income students from all over the globe. Unfortunately, however, I was presented with a consistent problem in the industry, there are simply too many brilliant, hardworking, and talented students who don’t have the resources for private counseling and not enough counselors willing to work at subsidized rates to meet the demand.
The situation seemed utterly hopeless. Until it wasn’t. In the fall of 2022, open AI released GPT 3, and the world was changed forever. It quickly became apparent that while there were clear dangers of AI there were clear benefits as well. I teamed up with my co-founder Saeed (a fellow international student from Berkeley) the following year to see if we could combine these two worlds of college admissions counseling and generative AI to create a piece of software that bridged the gap.
Thus, Kollegio was born. Today, I couldn’t be happier to present to you Kollegio, an integrated AI-powered ecosystem that helps students craft stand-out applications to get into their dream colleges. We are committed to remaking the way higher education is accessed not only here but all across the world. Our mission is clear, For everyone to check out Kollegio. Will you join us?
Senan Khawaja,
Co-Founder & CEO, Kollegio
Do Private Counselors Skew Admissions?
In 2006, the National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 107 high school seniors and found that college counseling had little to no effect on how likely the students were to get into their college choice.
The study did, however, show a minor effect (only a 7.9% impact) on where students ended up choosing to go. So why, then, do high-school seniors pay tens of thousands of dollars in fees to private counselors? Better yet, why do many of these college counseling firms charge these exorbitant fees and claim that they were somehow responsible for that student getting into Harvard?
The answer, in fact, lies in accountability and adherence. The same study by NBER also indicated that the likely impact of college counselors on admission likelihood could be more than twice what it currently is if students followed the advice of college counselors. The vast majority, despite paying counselors absurd amounts of fees, don’t follow the advice they get.
This is a puzzling question. Why would I not listen to someone I have paid $10,000 to advise me? Especially when that advice could help me make one of the most important decisions of my life. Perhaps, If you’ve bought a really expensive gym membership on the 1st of January and ended up in even worse shape by the time May came around and are now writing a newsletter to relate to other people through suffering, then you already know the answer to the above questions.
Accountability and adherence are key. Being wealthy can help you buy a gym membership or help you buy an expensive counselor’s time. However, by and large, if you want to achieve your fitness goals or create a profile and essay fit enough to get you into your dream college, it is much more important to have a mechanism of accountability than an expensive machine. What does this mechanism of accountability look like in the realm of college applications?
Well, think of the most effective ‘nerd’ you can imagine. They are organized, have sticky notes for their deadlines, seemingly have their college essays checked by 15 people from Ivy Leagues a day, and keep up with every financial aid application on planet Earth.
That is what accountability and adherence used to look like. Similar to how if you wanted to be really physically fit back in the 1980s, you would resort to eating only dry chicken, working out for every minute that you breathe, and moving the heaviest weight possible. What is required to be effective at both college applications and fitness today is much less intense than these two stereotypes. This is because the ability to compound knowledge from scientific and algorithmic research has allowed us to find out that you CAN have a life and also be physically fit or apply to colleges without pulling out all your hair.
Of course, this implies you actually USE the scientific research and methods it suggests. You will not get more easily physically fit just because you are in the 21st century; you will get more physically fit if you adhere to more effective methods of getting physically fit that we know of because we’re in the 21st century. So: are rich people more likely to get into better colleges because they can afford expensive college counselors? No.
In fact, buying off time from expensive college counselors might make you assume you’re already in. It may also make you assume that the college counselors are working by some tried-and-tested method that works. A college counselor who gets 2 of his students into Harvard and processes 100 applications has an effective sample size that is so small that it would be nearly random to trust them. So if you can’t trust the whims of previously ‘successful’ college counselors because their sample size is too small, who can you trust? The answer is once again: science and algorithms. Large enough datasets of tens of thousands of applicants, with language models that pick up which specific sentences and ideas in essays work and which ones don’t. If only something like that existed…
We’ll just leave it at that. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in encountering an app using such data to help your essay, don’t tell your friends about it and sign up on the wait list here.
By Mustafa Shaukat
Business Associate, Kollegio AI
This Week in Higher Education #1
Elite Colleges are bringing back standardized testing but the vast majority remain test-optional. (More details from Vox here)
Following COVID-19, universities recognized the difficulties students faced in being able to take standardized testing. As a consequence, to simplify the process of college applications many universities waived the requirement of standardized testing from the application process. This reduced student costs and saved them from the stress of having to go through standardized testing in addition to their existing academic workload.
Now elite universities like Yale, Dartmouth, and MIT are reinstating standardized testing. Broadly, research published by both Yale and Dartmouth has indicated that performance on standardized testing is predictive of performance in the university itself. Note that the vast majority of universities in the U.S. remain test-optional. More than 80% of all universities will not require the SAT or ACT for admissions for Fall 2025.
Insights from Common App as of March 2024. (More details from Common App here)
Common App releases insights regarding the data it gathers on students through every admissions cycle. As of March 2024, it revealed some interesting trends. We noticed three key trends in this data: firstly, below-median income applicants are increasing at a higher pace than above-median income applicants. Secondly, ‘fee-waiver eligible’ applicants increased at 4x the pace of non-fee-waiver eligible applicants. Lastly, the total application volume as of March 2024 increased by 7% relative to this period last year.
These are significant findings for students and those that work in the education industry alike. For students, this means there may be more competition for an increasingly limited number of seats at prestigious universities. This may also mean that there will be additional pressure on university admissions committees to distinguish students they deem worthy of enrolling in their institution. As a consequence with short decision deadlines and more applicants, we may see more universities in the U.S. prioritizing standardized testing and AP credits to assess candidates more swiftly.
Another point to remember is that students are also viewed as customers by universities. Also, note that there is an uneven distribution of these customers in favor of higher-ranked universities. This may allow higher-ranked universities to charge even more fees, which students might be willing to take on, especially given that interest rates in the year 2025 are likely to ease down. For those that work in the education industry, this is an opportunity, especially those looking to increase access to lower-than-median-income groups since this is the highest growth segment year-on-year.
Research by the Brookings Institute indicates that 25% of all applicants who start an application never hit submit (More details from the Brookings Institute here)
University applications being complicated and drawn out is no surprise to anyone who has applied to college in the U.S. However, this seems to be a problem that has persisted despite efforts of universities to make it simpler. Specifically, the Brookings Institute noted that completing the essay section was the biggest predictor of whether students completed the application. The important takeaway for those who aim to make college applications smoother is that if they can somehow utilize tools to allow essay completion easier for students, they may be able to attract even more talent.
Multiple Authors
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