Elena "Ellie" Cox is first and foremost an aunt of 13 nieces and nephews. She appreciates education and values the process it takes to get from point 'A' to point 'B' when it comes to determining a student's future higher education path. The traditional system isn't easy, nor is it perfect, but Cox is confident that her startup will bring to the market a series of science-based assessments that will reinvent the college decision-making process for the better.
A college-search system geared directly towards students and their parents, vibeffect offers first-of-its kind research, predictive analytics and fun gamification that teens love to create a guidance framework that will help you determine what environment your child is most likely to thrive in time for college. The goal here being to give the power back to families, equipping them with the information they need to make a stronger higher education decision.
Unlike most other edtech startups focused on reevaluating the college decision-making process, vibeffect is not only targeting soon-to-be high school graduates, but all kids between the ages of 12- to 18-years-old.
"We have to get in there young enough to make sure they're [students] not headed down a path eliminating options for themselves that should really stay on the horizon," said Cox as we sat down for coffee. "We want to make sure they're defining themselves as worthy of going to college early on."
Cox went on to add that "society does a better job at showing where students are deficient instead of where they're strong," which is why part of what vibeeffect is doing is debunking what have become societal norms."We establish a positive framework from the beginning," Cox said.
We establish a positive framework from the beginning
The D.C.-based company is able to disprove these common myths through science. Cox and her team have conducted a national study assessing how 100 different campus features correlate to 66 individual traits to examine how various social, academic, cultural/experience and financial traits play out at colleges across the U.S. vibeffect looks at college as an ecosystem and the teen as an individual to show how people respond to contrasting situations diversely. What this does is give students the knowledge they need to determine how they will succeed on school grounds, providing them with the ability to maximize their sense of happiness both academically and socially while at college.
Students take assessments at three critical stages in their lives: Before they get frustrated with the experience, when they've received offers from colleges and need to evaluate which is best for them, and after they go to school and either love their experience or have the freshman blues. These assessments offer unbiased and collaborative information sure to change the way parents and teens think about selecting, getting into and thriving in college.
Beyond the assessments, vibeffect has a suite of tools for parents to translate higher education information down to "kid language," which helps make transparent the differences between fact and fiction.
There's also the College Confidence Index, the crux of vibeffect's argument for a better college search process, which will be released each year to reveal the percentage of college upperclassman that are surviving on three dimensions, what's driving that thriving (basically what is it about a student's campus experience that science can show is correlated to that thriving) and a demographic breakdown of college populations.
vibeffect doesn't plan to launch until the spring of 2015, but already it has raised $1.2 million "because of the idea and the recognized demand for something like this," Cox said. Part of that funding came as a result of a two-minute serendipitous elevator meeting, which goes to show just how monumental of a venture investors predict vibeffect will be.
