Nerd Apply raises $3.2 million in seed funding for its college admissions counseling platform
Nerd Apply, a college counseling platform, has raised $3.2 million in seed funding to scale and increase its security, compliance and infrastructure.
The company says it addresses the need for reliable, evidence-based support for the college admissions process, as students face increasingly complex processes with limited reliable data.
Nerd Apply says its privacy-first platform offers aggregated admissions outcomes shared by counselors for counselors, enabling them to provide more realistic guidance without exposing student identities.
With participation from Riverpark Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and 1.61 Ventures, the round was also supported by angel investors including Gokul Rajaram and David Krane, CEO and Managing Partner at Google Ventures.
“I’m proud to be an investor in Nerd Apply, a company that is fundamentally shifting college counseling from guesswork to data-driven certainty,” comments Rajaram. “By leveraging the world’s largest dataset of successful applications, they are empowering advisors with the objective insights needed to help every student find their best-fit path.”
Qualitative admissions outcome data
Nerd Apply says it will also use the funding to support product development to help make its admissions outcomes data more usable and actionable. It will also create counselor workflows and real-world advising conversations using the data as well as new roles in customer success and engineering as Nerd Apply scales.
“Students are making life-shaping decisions with incomplete or misleading information,” explains Braden Weissman and Cooper Weissman, Co-Founders at Nerd Apply. “By aggregating real admissions outcomes from real students, we give counselors the clarity so they can guide students with confidence. This seed round allows us to scale responsibly while maintaining our standards for privacy, security, and trust.”
Nerd Apply says it aims to become “the trusted infrastructure for qualitative admissions outcome data”, supporting counselors to widen options and reduce uncertainty for students.
“Nerd Apply’s organic traction reflects a stellar team that is deeply committed to bringing clarity to an increasingly difficult to navigate college admissions process,” adds Chris Moore, Partner at Redpoint Ventures and angel investor in the round.
“The company sits at the intersection of data infrastructure, analytics, and trusted platforms – areas where their exceptional group of investors have spent decades operating. I’m excited to participate in one of the most influential rounds in education technology that is already delivering meaningful education outcomes at scale.”
