What's Zinch
* A few highlights.
+ More than colleges currently recruiting students on Zinch.
+ More than 400,000 high school students have already created Zinch profiles.
+ All 50 states, more than 160 countries, and over 19,000 high schools are represented by students currently on Zinch.
(Yup, everything above was accomplished in under 9 months of being online)
* The introduction.
Zinch has opened the door of online interaction to college admissions. Four out of five high school students are online and seeking to connect with others. Through Zinch, high school students worldwide can now communicate and engage with US colleges and universities through a format that defines their generation: the web.
* The problem: being defined by a test score.
Every year, colleges and universities have specific needs that must be met. Often times these needs are a result of a large alumni donation geared towards improving a specific program, a grant to enhance a specific department, or an initiative to increase underrepresented minority groups. Reaching these students is no easy task.
To this end, colleges spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on recruitment and outreach to generate new applications. The primary method in which colleges find students to recruit is through standardized tests (PSAT, SAT, and ACT). Colleges purchase student contact data from the test providers and send generic information about their school in a blanket marketing approach, all the while trying to attract the very specific students that are needed. Because colleges start with limited student data, their recruitment efforts lack personalization. Furthermore, the traditional method of mail-outs completely ignores new mediums of communication (the web) that capture the attention of today’s student generation.
High school students want to be discovered by a college that is the right fit for them. They want to know if applying to that college will be worth the time, effort, and cost. Colleges want to find, and students want to be found.
* The solution: seeing the whole picture.
Zinch revolutionizes the current college recruitment process by allowing colleges to seek out and interact with high school students online, as a guest on the students' stage. The student's self-reported information being shared with colleges on Zinch is comprehensive--much more than a test score--and completely searchable. Zinch creates an environment in which in-depth student information can be made available to the colleges, thus enabling relevant college information to be made available to the student. Through Zinch, communication becomes more effective and interaction becomes more engaging on all ends.
