For counselors and directors of guidance
It does the remembering. You do the conversation.
Nothing here decides anything about a student. It keeps track of what would otherwise sit in your head or in nine different tabs, does the arithmetic you would have done by hand, and puts the result in front of you in the order it needs doing.
Monday morning, before the first bell.
One screen that answers a single question: who needs me this week, and for what. Ranked by what is at stake and when, not by surname.
Every row says why it is there and what to do about it. Nothing is flagged that you cannot act on today.
Needs action this week
4 of 118 on your caseloadMaya Delgado, 12
no parent to askAsked for help with the FAFSA parent section on Thursday. Nobody has replied.
Daniel Okonjo, 12
11 daysState aid deadline. No application started, and this is the one that carries money.
Priya Raman, 11
to vouch forActivities list assembled and edited in her own words. Ready for you to read.
The Gates Scholarship
flagged by 3 studentsThree students report the link is dead. One entry to check, not three pieces of work.
Illustrative. Real student names never appear outside the school.
Four things it takes off your desk.
The arithmetic on what a college actually costs
Net price by family income bracket for 6,273 institutions, already worked out, with the source and date underneath. You stop being the person who has to explain that the sticker price is not the price.
Fifty-four deadlines you no longer have to hold
Resolved to each student's own state and grade, ordered by what to do rather than by which is nearest. A state that publishes no date is shown as one to ask about — never an invented one.
Activities lists that arrive ready to read
Assembled from the record inside the Common App's character limits, each line showing the entries it rests on. You vouch for a line or you do not — you never have to reconstruct where it came from.
The student who has nobody to ask
A private route she can use without telling a parent, with one tap to reach you. It is never inferred from a broken home or a missing signature. She chooses it, and a parent account cannot see that she did.
It never talks to a student about a student. Nothing is sent to a family, no message goes out in your name, and no recommendation reaches a student that you have not seen. The product's job ends where your judgement begins.
What it will not do, on purpose.
Most of these were possible to build and were deliberately not built. A counselor who cannot predict what the system will say to a student cannot vouch for it.
- No rankingColleges are never ordered best to worst, and no student is ever scored against another.
- No verdictIt never tells a student she is unlikely to get in, or that a field is not for her.
- No single causeNo grade, score or club may produce a direction on its own — enforced in the database, not by a guideline.
- No invented figuresAn unknown number is shown as unknown. Every figure carries its source and the date it was read.
- No essayIt returns her own words as raw material. It never drafts an essay for a student to submit.
A counselor's hour is the scarcest thing in the building. Nothing here is worth building unless it gives one back.
Your sponsorship is the whole pilot.
We ask for a director of guidance as the pilot's sponsor, not as a formality. You are the only person who can tell us whether a screen is useful on a Tuesday in November, and we would rather hear it early and badly than late and politely.