Why Nxtfour?

When we began we had a vision of a platform that connected high school students, college admissions counselors, and parents.  We thought we could build a product that could serve as a network, a database, a marketing tool and a forum.

However, after reading Eric Ries’s book The Lean Startup, we soon realized that this would not be possible from the get-go.  We took a step back and said “what can we offer high school students right now that will benefit them the most” and we came up with our MVP (minimum viable product).  Our MVP lets high school students search and connect with other students by college choices and interests.  There is no other place on the internet where a student can search by a college name alone and get a list of specific high school students interested in those same colleges.

In a recent study, of 59 high school students, we found that 77% of students would be willing to share their GPA, SAT and ACT scores, publicly, if it enabled them to see the same statistics of other students.  We found that 67% of students would be interested in a Facebook alternative to connect them with other students.

After contacting college admissions officers at private colleges up and down the east coast we learned that when a student is ‘borderline’, meaning they are on the fence of acceptance and denial, admissions officers will turn to social media, essentially ‘googling’ the student.  We don’t want student’s Facebooks and twitters to be what colleges see.  Rather, let the colleges see the student’s nxtfour profile, which consists of their relevant experience, activities and statistics from high school that best represent them.

Thus nxtfour serves as a place for students to upload activities, pictures etc. and connect with other students, while gaining insight into what their prospective colleges will bring.  Users will have access to profiles, articles and blogs concerning each of their top schools, giving them exposure to campus life before they set foot on campus.