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Even for an entrepreneur, Katie Fang has lofty goals. She started SchooLinks, a matchmaker for schools and students, because she’s worried education isn’t evolving as fast as human intellect. While technological advances are quickly changing the way we think and learn, school is pretty much the same, and rising tuitions keep college out of reach for many.
"We want to see a jump in the college attendance rate,” Fang said. “And we want to be one of the reasons it happened. The long term goal is [for SchooLinks] to be where all the education-related stuff will happen. If you’re going to college, or want to study a new language, or look for an internship, you’ll go to SchooLinks."
Fang is also planning on a jump in revenue, with college recruiting estimated to be a $10 billion business. According to a study by Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a higher ed recruitment consulting firm, the median cost to recruit a student to a four-year public university was $457 per student. For private universities, that figure was $2,185, with one full-time recruiting staff member for every 33 new students enrolled.
As a platform, SchooLinks offers schools a way to reduce those costs by narrowing their search to pools of pre-qualified students.
It seems to be working.
Just over a year since launching, SchooLinks is already teeming with students, and 2,000 schools across the globe are registered. It’s a good measure of engagement on the site, which differentiates itself from competitors by having the schools enter and maintain their own data.
Fang says that allows SchooLinks to stay more up to date with less overhead.
"I knew the market was big,” she said. "But I didn’t expect schools to be so adaptive to our model."
The site is also popular with the freelance consultants universities often hire to vet foreign applicants.
“Everyone around the world wants to get a degree from the U.S.,” Fang said, “so a lot of offshore consultants help prospective students in their country get into American universities. That’s a big market."
Theoretically, everyone benefits: Schools get pre-qualified candidates, students find more specific and accurate information about schools than they would on the open web, and the consultants can market themselves for hire by the schools—although they’re required to answer students’ questions on the site for free.
[ibimage==37122==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-right]Given the site’s growth, the team behind it is still pretty lean. In July, the company relocated to Austin from Los Angeles in a very literal way: All seven employees live in one condo, sharing work space downtown at Capital Factory.
“We’re all still in that college zone of life, so it works for us,” Fang said. “But it’s definitely interesting.”
Even in close quarters, though, there’s room to grow at SchooLinks.
“We’re always hiring if we see people who believe in our vision and are capable,” Fang said. “Obviously we always need more talent, especially when we’re growing this fast.”
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