For counselors
Your workspace is built around one question: which programs suit which of your students, and what has to happen before each deadline. Everything below is reachable from the top bar, and Ctrl/Cmd + K searches programs, students and collections from anywhere.
1. Add your students
Students → Add student. Name is the only required field; grade, GPA, intended majors, activities, budget and geography all feed the AI matcher later, so fill in what you have. If you supply an email address the same dialog invites the student to their own login — but adding a student and giving them a login are separate decisions, and so is whether they can see anything.
Bringing over a whole caseload? Students → Import takes a CSV or JSON file. Export the roster first to see the exact column names — the flat CSV export round-trips straight back through import.
2. Build a shortlist
Programs is the catalog. The rail on the left filters by category, subject, entering grade, session month, location, format, cost and more; the search box matches program names, hosts, descriptions, subjects and your own private tags.
Tick the checkbox on any number of cards and use Add to… in the toolbar. One dialog covers every destination: your students’ shortlists, a collection, and your private tags. Select-all spans every filtered result, not just the page you are looking at.
On a program’s own page, Add to… is the primary button in the header. The panel beside the description shows which of your students already have it and how far along they are.
3. Say why
Each shortlisted program carries a counselor note — the one or two sentences explaining why this program, for this student. It is what a share email and a printed PDF carry, and the dashboard tracks how many shortlist entries are still missing one.
Student-level notes are different and are never shown to the student. See Sharing and access for exactly who reads what.
Private to you, and invisible on every admin and institute surface: a counselor note on a program (your own view of the program itself, rather than of a student’s fit) and my tags, free-text labels that become their own filter in the browse rail.
4. Let the AI propose matches
On a student’s page, AI recommendations reads their grade, GPA, intended majors, activities, budget, geography and format preference — never their name or contact details — and proposes programs with reasoning you can keep or discard. Each model run costs one credit; a repeat run with nothing changed is served from cache and is free. See Credits and billing.
5. Share it
The Share button on a student’s page is the single place that answers “who gets this”. It grants the student and their guardians access to the shortlist and the application tracker, invites a login, manages guardians, and — as its last section — sends a copy by email. Nothing is shared until you switch it on.
Export ▾ gives you the same data as a CSV, a nested JSON file, or a printed PDF. Branding for the emails you send lives in Settings → Email branding, with a live preview.
6. Track the applications
Every student page has an Applications tab beside the shortlist. It lists each shortlisted program with a checklist of what applying involves, derived from the program itself — recommendation letters, a transcript, a financial-aid form. The first tick starts the checklist; status follows it upward on its own, and submissions and decisions are yours to set.
Collections
A collection is a reusable list — “research programs for rising juniors”, “free and local”. Build one once, then Apply to shortlist onto any student, which copies the programs and your per-item notes across. Collections can be kept private or published to other counselors.
Handing a student over
Transfer to another counselor on the student’s page moves the record, its shortlist, its notes and its institute in one step; you lose access the moment it commits. If a parent or a self-registered student asks you to take their record on, the request appears in a Connection requests panel at the top of Students for you to accept or decline.
If you run an institute
An institute admin signs in as a counselor and gets one extra nav item, Institute: an org-wide deadline view, the counselor list with invites, every counselor’s students with the ability to reassign, shared email branding you can lock, and a pooled credit balance with an optional per-counselor monthly cap. A counselor’s private program notes and tags stay private even from you.
Institutes are set up by us rather than self-serve, because an institute admin sees every member’s roster. Ask at Request access.