AdmitSee

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AdmitSee

Available in| English
URL| www.admitsee.com
Current status| Active

AdmitSee, Inc. is an educational technology company and college-oriented social-networking site with offices in San Francisco and New York City.[1] Their primary offering is AdmitSee, a database of successful college application essays and resumes.[2] The service allows college applicants to read applications and resumes of accepted students. They browse basic profiles for free, and then pay to access full application files, including essays and advice; half of this money gets paid to the college students who shared their content. Applicants can also communicate directly with verified college students via the paid mentor messaging feature.[3]

As of January 2016, the platform has over 50,000 application files and over 100,000 active users.[4] AdmitSee uses official school IDs to verify student profiles and facilitates universities screening for plagiarism.[3]

## Founding

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The company was founded by Lydia Fayal and Stephanie Shyu in 2013 while attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania.[5] The idea to create a database of application files came from Fayal's work as a college consultant when clients would ask how they compared to other applicants.[6] After meeting at a Wharton event, the classmates expanded the idea to include peer mentoring and big data analysis.[7] The founders were introduced in 2013 to founding engineer, Jerry Huyghe, who built the initial version of the website.[8] The company advanced to the final round of the Wharton Business Plan Competition in 2014.[9]

Early funding for the company came from Founder.org and the edtech accelerator Imagine K12.[10] The company raised $1.8million seed funding in 2015 with plans to build a lead generation offering.[11] Earlier in 2015, Fayal and Shyu were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list as influencers in the field of education.[12]

The founders credit early traction to their virtual internship program, which they modeled after oDesk and to early adoption of online communities, such as Reddit.[1][13]

## Reception

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Press for AdmitSee includes USA Today lauding its plagiarism prevention methods and calling AdmitSee a "must-visit site this application season."[14] News coverage has tended to focus on the company's published data, which include linguistic analysis of the site's repository of essays and of survey responses.[15][16] Responses to this data have been mixed; some critics maintain that the data help students "game the system".[17] AdmitSee has also received pushback from offline college consulting and test prep groups, who criticize AdmitSee's voyeuristic potential, comparing it to an online dating site.[18] Despite criticism, the company does have its supporters in the admissions community and collaborates with educational partners.[13]

## References

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1. ^ a b Fayal, Lydia (28 October 2014). "Crowdsourcing for Students". Wall Street Journal: The Accelerators. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
2. ^ Anders, George (1 December 2014). "What Essays Thrill Elite Schools? These Teens Will Show You". Forbes. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
3. ^ a b Ma, Alexandra (17 August 2015). "This Social Network Could Help You Get Into Your Dream College". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
4. ^ della Cava, Marco (17 January 2016). "AdmitSee aims to be LinkedIn for college seekers". USA Today. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
5. ^ Roy, Melony (1 February 2016). "Two Penn Alumni Create Social Network For College Admissions". CBS Philly. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
6. ^ Kavanaugh, Nadine. "Q&A With AdmitSee, Wharton Business Plan Competition Finalist". Wharton Entrepreneurship Blog. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-17.
7. ^ Segran, Elizabeth (3 August 2015). "Use These Two Words on Your College Essay to Get into Harvard". Fast Company. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
8. ^ "Draper University Livestream - Lydia Fayal - Admitsee". Draper University.
9. ^ Itah, Maya (12 May 2014). "Doing A Startup In The Thick Of Law School". Tipping the Scales.
10. ^ Ioffe, Yevgeny (29 September 2014). "Q&A With Stephanie Shyu, Co-Founder of AdmitSee". edtechtimes.
11. ^ Loizos, Connie (6 October 2015). "AdmitSee Raises $1.8 Million In Seed Funding From Silicon Valley Heavyweights". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 February 2016.
12. ^ Howard, Caroline (5 January 2015). "Code And College Readiness Are Reinventing Education On 30 Under 30". Forbes. Archived from the original on January 9, 2015. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
13. ^ a b Rao, Sameer (26 February 2015). "Can AdmitSee change the college admissions game?". PhillyVoice. Retrieved 5 February 2016.
14. ^ Fortenbury, Jon (4 March 2015). "3 useful websites to check out while applying to college". Retrieved 17 March 2015.
15. ^ Anders, George (11 November 2015). "10 Reasons Your Daughter's College Essay Won't Resemble Your Son's". Forbes. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
16. ^ "EdTech Company AdmitSee's Survey of 26,000 High School Students Pinpoints "The Essay" as the Most Frustrating Element of the College Application". PRWeb. 26 January 2016. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
17. ^ Inman, Eric. "College Admissions Demystified – Stephanie Shyu of AdmitSee". Startup Chronicle.
18. ^ Stephens, Josh (8 December 2014). "College Applicants Should Seek Inspiration, Not Imitation, in Others' Essays". Huffington Post. Retrieved 17 March 2015.