Faculty admissions purposes have surged 9% within the 2025-2026 cycle whereas acceptance charges at prime faculties have plummeted under 10%, making a panorama the place households navigate selections with incomplete data and counselors face mounting strain to supply assured steering regardless of restricted dependable information. With college students now making use of to a mean of 5.38 faculties and counselors managing outcomes throughout a whole bunch of establishments yearly, the hole between anecdotal information and systematic insights has by no means been extra pronounced. Nerd Apply addresses this problem by aggregating over 100,000 totally de-identified admissions outcomes shared by counselors throughout 500+ organizations, creating the world’s largest qualitative dataset that captures not simply take a look at scores and GPAs, however the essays, actions, and context that really form faculty selections. The platform allows counselors to benchmark college students in opposition to actual candidates, floor household conversations in patterns relatively than guesswork, and widen faculty record choices past the identical 80 ultra-selective faculties dominating software methods.
AlleyWatch sat down with Nerd Apply Cofounders Braden Weissman and Cooper Weissman to study extra concerning the enterprise, the longer term plans, current funding spherical, and far, rather more…
Who have been your buyers and the way a lot did you increase?
Nerd Apply raised a $3.2M Seed spherical. The spherical included Riverpark Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and a gaggle of angel buyers together with Gokul Rajaram; David Krane, CEO and Managing Associate of Google Ventures; Jeff Crowe, Managing Associate of Norwest Ventures; Matt McIlwain, Managing Director of Madrona Ventures; and Chris Moore, Associate at Redpoint Ventures.
Inform us concerning the services or products that Nerd Apply presents.
Nerd Apply is a privacy-first information platform that helps faculty counselors information college students utilizing actual admissions outcomes relatively than anecdotes or averages. With over 100,000 actual purposes in its dataset, the platform makes it straightforward to prepare scholar data, perceive admissions patterns, and share insights with out exposing identities.
The crew sees a long-term alternative to construct the foundational information platform for school admissions, just like the function EPIC Programs performs in healthcare.
Nerd Apply brings collectively accomplished, de-identified admissions outcomes so counselors can see how related college students really fared. The product is designed to help actual counseling conversations by making reasoning and proof seen, with out exposing particular person scholar identities.
What impressed the beginning of Nerd Apply?
We noticed how usually faculty counseling relied on intuition and personal anecdotes relatively than shared outcomes households may really see. Coming from public training and dealing intently with counselors, we understood how tough it was to present assured steering with out concrete examples. Nerd Apply was constructed to responsibly deliver de-identified admissions outcomes collectively, so counselors can floor high-stakes conversations in readability, belief, and actuality.
How is Nerd Apply completely different?
Nerd Apply is the one place counselors can see what really occurred in faculty admissions, with the student-level context that issues. Not simply grades and scores, however extracurriculars, actions, and essays, all dealt with in a privacy-safe manner. As an alternative of predictions or averages, counselors can have a look at actual outcomes from related college students and use these examples in conversations with households. Nerd Apply doesn’t exchange present counseling instruments. It provides counselors a transparent, organized strategy to monitor outcomes after college students apply and produce trustworthy, real-world context into future steering.
What’s your small business mannequin?
Nerd Apply is a subscription-based platform for school counseling organizations. Counselors and counseling corporations pay to make use of the product to prepare admissions outcomes, perceive outcomes, and help advising conversations. As well as, Nerd Apply works with districts, governments, and nonprofit foundations to supply de-identified, mixture insights that assist inform coverage selections and useful resource allocation. Pupil-level information is rarely offered, and identifiable data shouldn’t be shared with schools or business third events.
What was the funding course of like?
It was refreshing to see so many buyers enthusiastic about edtech, given the challenges which have confronted edtech corporations previously.
What elements about your small business led your buyers to jot down the examine?
Traders have been drawn to the dimensions and uniqueness of the info Nerd Apply is constructing. At present, most training information utilized by governments and establishments is solely quantitative, targeted on metrics like attendance and commencement charges. That leaves out the context that really shapes scholar outcomes. Nerd Apply is accumulating a brand new sort of dataset that mixes outcomes with qualitative context corresponding to actions, essays, and experiences, all in a privacy-safe manner. This creates a a lot clearer image of how college students navigate the admissions course of and opens the door to higher decision-making throughout counseling, training coverage, and useful resource allocation.
What are the milestones you propose to attain within the subsequent six months?
Close to-term milestones embrace increasing the dimensions and variety of the de-identified dataset, growing counselor adoption and engagement, strengthening distribution past conference-based channels, and persevering with to put money into product enhancements that make outcomes information simpler to make use of in actual counseling workflows.
The place do you see the corporate going now over the close to time period?
Over the close to time period, Nerd Apply is targeted on changing into the trusted commonplace for privacy-safe admissions outcomes information. Which means increasing adoption throughout counseling contexts, persevering with to strengthen information governance and infrastructure, and constructing a sustainable progress engine in preparation for the following stage of the corporate.
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