Schoold closes $4.5M seed for college planning app

Another service emerges to help high school students decide on their college and future career

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As if students weren’t stressed out enough trying to figure out where to apply for college, now there’s an app so they can start aiming for specific salaries before even graduating high school.

Jokes aside, Schoold seeks to solve a real dilemma that thousands of high school students face every year as they approach graduation: where to go to college?

The company, which offers a smartphone app for college and career planning, today announced the closing of a $4.5 million seed round from FastForward, Lorne Abony (CEO of FastForward and former CEO of Mood Media Corporation), and other private investors.

Like many other services out there, the free app lets students learn about colleges they may be interested in attending, including everything from majors and degrees offered to tuition and other associated costs. The app also includes information around scholarships, grants, and loans, as college is often as much a financial decision as academic one.

When it comes to the academic side of things, Schoold goes one step further by using information provided by the student to recommend schools, majors, and careers that would fit their interests.

The app even lets students figure out how much money they would make after college graduation with a “powerful salary calculator,” which uses data for different careers and companies. Of course, trying to figure out an individual’s salary before they’ve actually selected a major, let alone selected a college—not to mention a myriad of other factors related to location and personal attributes—is going to result in a pretty hazy answer. But it’s no doubt useful in giving students at least a small glimpse into what lies ahead.

“The choice of a college and a major literally sets the stage for a young person’s future career options, earning potential, and job satisfaction,” said Joe Ross, recently appointed President and COO of Schoold, in a prepared statement. “Schoold simplifies an unnecessarily confusing, complex process for students and families with a customized, intuitive app powered by rigorous data science.”

The company says its app, which is free to download for for both Android and iOS devices, has been downloaded a half million times since its release last month. As far as charging for additional functionality or monetization further down the road, here's what a company spokesperson had to share:

Schoold will offer a full product to student[s] for free and envision doing this down the road as well. Later they will explore ways to offer premium features as well as explore opportunities to work with universities to reach out to college-bound students and brand themselves. Schoold is likely to take a page from Zillow in how they monetize their services.

It’s not the only one out there doing college search, however. Other top tools include College Advisor (from the Princeton Review), College Match, and College Passport. There are many, many more.

Schoold will use its new funding to expand the app’s functionality while growing the company’s engineering and marketing teams.