Imagine a match made in heaven, a relationship unique to you and the post-secondary establishment you were meant to attend. Take it a step further and imagine all of this in a world where you are free of the burdens of self-navigating antiquated resources to research where you should go after high school and how you can apply what you love to do to your post-secondary education. Realizing these imaginations is a new and innovative app known as SPROUT. SPROUT is brought to you by Glacier, a “social enterprise” that provides beneficial services and support to high school students. The objective is to match you to your perfect post-secondary institution in an innovative and convenient way.
THE INSPIRATION
In an effort to bring an efficient and unique solution to the post-secondary selection process, founders Benny Giang and Raymond Huynh sought to culminate the vast and sometimes overwhelming information on post-secondary education and streamline the resources in an easy-to-use app to create the perfect match between high school students and post-secondary institutions. When asked about what inspired them to create the app Benny answers, “With CALM classes being phased out in some schools in Alberta and the variants of quality amongst career practitioners and guidance counsellors found in the province, we want to provide a solution to these invariants to high school students and so we’ve created an app to provide a substitution that will offer consistency across all regions.”
The result is SPROUT, a Calgary-based project that aspires to be the one-stop app for all of your higher education inquiries. Using similar techniques like the swiping feature found in match-making apps such as OkCupid and Tinder, SPROUT is an easy to use and quick way of finding your post-secondary soulmate. As Raymond describes, “It’s painless, simple to use and aesthetically pleasing.”
FUNCTIONS & FEATURES
Fast, interactive, accurate and free are just some of the promises that SPROUT makes to all users of the app.
To garner accuracy in users’ matches, the app boasts a comprehensive, yet expedient questionnaire that involves inquiries about lifestyle, career choices, learning styles, and beyond. The process includes a 3-pronged approach. Benny summarizes these three phases as being:
- General Information
- Internal and External Assessment
- Human curation
General information will include the user’s name, grade, and so forth. The internal assessment surveys everything that happens inside the post-secondary institution’s campus, such as food quality and study spaces. The external assessment is used to decipher the user’s preferability everything outside of the campus like weather and city life. The human component will be to create a personable connection to integrate the user’s personality and character. Thus, topics will range from the user’s passions to lifestyle choices and even to their purpose in life. “We will find the best intellectual hub for the student to thrive in.” says Raymond.
Another unique feature is the app’s wish list section, where users can use the explorer tool to navigate which universities they are interested in beyond their matches. Furthermore, users will also enjoy an interactive component by having access to view their friends’ wish lists. SPROUT also plans to have a peer-to-peer review. This will allow current students at the institution to provide knowledge and advice to those who are looking to attend.
MY EXPERIENCE
Currently, SPROUT is running their process by hand to develop the perfect algorithm to match students with the appropriate post-secondary institution. Although I have already chosen the university I will be attending in the fall, I decided to delve into the process to gain additional insight. Let me preface my experience by saying that when I headed into Glacier’s office to meet the founders of SPROUT, I did not expect to be the one interviewed.
As I entered the questioning period with Raymond and Benny, I was asked a variety of questions, many of which were beyond the generic questions that are often asked of students when attempting to distinguish the school they should attend. The interviewing process continued with meta-thinking conversations and debates pertaining to my character. Benny and Raymond are not people who settle. They kept pushing me to “dig deeper” to get true insight into who I was and what my passions were. It surprised me how intrinsic their questions were and assured me that the “human factor” in the app would be very present in order to generate accurate matches. It is without saying, that I greatly look forward to my results.
It is apparent that both Benny and Raymond are extremely dedicated and passionate to matching students to schools that will allow them to follow what they love to do. To have a perspective that was driving me to think beyond practicality and focus in on what I truly wanted out of not only my university experience, but of my life beyond school was inspiring and refreshing.
To also become one of the first students to test out SROUT’s process, send them an email at hello@joinsprout.com.
THE FUTURE OF SPROUT
Eventually, SPROUT wants to partner up with universities and more specifically, their admissions offices to provide a greater academic scope to its users. The objective of this partnership is clear as Benny states,”Most of the time students go to recruiting sessions and only return with the school’s view book and feel unsatisfied with the rushed conversation with the school’s representative. But we want to provide the opportunity to open the conversation up further between recruiters and students for a more on-on-one connection to create an increasingly integrated solution with the app.”
The app is currently piloting in Western Canada and plans to launch in the fall, but Raymond explains SPROUT’s plans of expansion and states, “First we want to see the success of this app here in Calgary and then we plan to go national. We really want to focus on capturing the Canadian students right now.”
SPROUT is an all-encompassing solution for selecting the right post-secondary school for you. It is efficient in what it does and it is for the convenience and benefit of all, making it the newest essential app for all high school students across Canada.
For more information on how you can get involved with SPROUT, check out joinsprout.com.