As college students and grassroots campaigns gear up for the upcoming midterm elections, many wonder what these students really want from their political leaders. College Reaction is giving marketers, news outlets and others a peek into the average college student’s mind with polls.
After launching in July, the D.C.-based platform has about 7,000 students from across the nation signed up to be polled. But the polls don’t just stop at politics – researchers can create surveys about nearly anything. From pop culture trends and fashion to gaming and sports, College Reaction works to provide insight on the various topics that students care about.
“We’re a platform for college students’ opinions to reach the mainstream discourse – both qualitatively through the writing and quantitatively through the polling,” founder and CEO Cyrus Beschloss said.
College Reaction has more than 80 contributing writers at 40 colleges around the U.S. Journalists, marketing professionals, and other users can create surveys for a fee and receive up to 3,000 responses within a day. Prices are determined by timing, the number of responses needed and the number of colleges targeted.
“We take pride in representing all of the demographic, political, racial and socioeconomic diversity that’s represented in the college demographic,” said Beschloss.
Beschloss started the company after writing for a regional newspaper, The Eagle. He said he wanted to find more ways to put his opinion in the forefront of his work as he gained an audience with the publication. From this audience, College Reaction was born, also becoming a member of the 1776 startup hub.
“I started thinking that the rest of the country really does care about what college students have to say about these broad critical issues,” said Beschloss. “Within the next year, I started writing on CollegeReaction.com.”
Beschloss began reaching out to other college students to write for the website. At first it focused on articles and other media, but with the newest polling feature, the website is transitioning to quantify its findings and provide more insights for users.
So far, the platform has been used by Axios and is hoping to gain more news organizations as clients.
