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Making the Grades
As colleges become more competitive, a young entrepreneur taps into
crowdsourcing to help students find the right fit
BY ADAM BAER
ONE DAY LAST FALL,
“D,” an Asian-American high
school student, loggedon to the college reviewwebsite
Unigo, which lets visitors buy video chat sessionswith
college students and adult “counselors.” Her questions
were basic. “What should I know about the Ivies?”
she asked. A counselor answered: “I think sometimes
they’re a li le bit overrated, and I know that in a lot
of cultures, there’s a big focus on Ivy League schools.”
In another chat, D asked a college student about
the typical perception of Northwestern. His answer:
“Maybe, like, upper-middle-class, and, I don’t know …
like, the dating scene is kinda bad?”
These are just two of a vast number of exchanges
that are happening onUnigo, andwhile the individual
answers may not be definitive (or even particularly
coherent), taken together they’re meant to provide
a fuller, more candid and arguably more useful pic-
ture of life at various U.S. colleges than traditional
rankings can. Right now, Unigo receives a million
unique visitors a month and expects to report
seven-figure earnings this year. The website has
also a racted glowing reviews from the
Wall Street
Journal
and the
New York Times
. It is, as one high
schooler puts it, “the Consumer Reports of colleges”—
only for the wiki age.
Unigo was founded in 2008 by Jordan Goldman,
now 29, a native of Staten Island, N.Y., and happy
graduate ofWesleyanUniversity. The fast-talking son
of a public school teacher, Goldman says he lucked
out in selecting his college—“I really didn’t have the
right amount of info tomake that choice”—but knew
others who weren’t as fortunate. “A couple of my
ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX NABAUM
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
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APRIL 2012
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bright ideas