This Week's Education News News
[NPR] More college applicants are opting to include SAT or ACT scores in their submissions [Forbes] Princeton University to resume requiring the ACT or SAT for admission in 2028 [U.S. Department of Education] The 2026-27 FAFSA form launches earliest in program history [Inside Higher Ed] Georgetown will reportedly join the Common App [Inside Higher Ed] Low-income students more likely to submit AI-generated admissions essays The ORISE STEM Solutions Showcase, a national STEM challenge where students design an engineering solution to a real-world problem, closes submissions on August 14, 2026. The New York Times Summer Reading Contest, a free weekly writing contest for students ages 13 to 19 responding to the news, closes on August 14, 2026. The Concord Review, the only quarterly journal publishing history research papers by secondary students, closes its Winter issue submissions on August 1, 2026.

Five Focused Services for Students Applying to US Colleges, Wherever Their Families Live:

a five-college shortlist, a counselor-ready AP or IB plan, an extracurricular roadmap, one Roster workspace for your profile, chances, applications, and essays, plus a financial aid forms playbook. Your parents can follow along on a consented family panel, and the Test Bank is next door for exam practice.

5 Student Services
4 Grade Years
$0 Every Tool
Proven Outcomes16 Campuses

Over the past 10 years, EduFinder's student services have helped more than 5,000 students worldwide earn admission to schools like:

School names and marks belong to their respective institutions and do not imply endorsement or affiliation.

Inside the Dashboard

Four Years, Five Services, One Dashboard.

One login, and nothing copied between tools. Scroll the five chapters in the order the grades unfold, from 9th-grade shortlist to senior-fall aid forms, following Priya Nair, the fictional senior from our sample workspace, and watch each service hand off to the next. Exam practice runs alongside all four years in the Test Bank.

Chapter 1 · Fall · 9th Grade

Twenty Questions In, Five Schools Out.

Freshman year begins: know what you are aiming at before you build everything else around it.

Take the seven-minute survey once and the Builder matches you against 417 US colleges. Priya's five matches became cards she could open, compare, and hand straight to her Roster.

How the Shortlist! Builder Works
Chapter 2 · Spring · 9th Grade

Walk into Course Selection with a Defensible AP or IB Plan.

With your schools chosen, lock next year's subjects with your counselor before summer, then re-run it every year you choose courses.

Feed it your major, transcript, and schedule constraints; the AP track returns three picks and two backups, and the IB track builds the full six-subject diploma package with HL/SL levels. Both flag the risks to raise with your counselor, and one adjustment pass rebuilds the plan if a pick falls through.

How the Resolve! Planner Works
Chapter 3 · 10th–12th Grade

From Here On, Everything Lives on One Board.

Three milestones anchor the board: a first Profile & Chances read in spring of 10th, a locked College List by spring of 11th, and essays in the summer before 12th.

Your profile powers honest chance reads, your list stays balanced across reach, target, and safety, and every essay is tracked to its deadline. The board always names your next move: Priya's is Georgetown's community essay, due November 1.

How the Roster! Board Works
Chapter 4 · Fall · 11th Grade

Your Activities, Sequenced like a Plan, Not a Wish List.

Junior year, the one that decides most of your application, opens here: start your extracurricular story now, and keep re-running Resolve and retaking the SAT as you go.

Tell the Atlas your field and the hours you actually have; it maps your activities across phased terms and revises when life changes. When Priya picked up weeknight shifts at her family's store, a revision folded the job in instead of pretending it away.

How the Pursuit! Atlas Works
Chapter 5 · Fall · 12th Grade

The Money Forms, in Order, before the Deadlines.

As applications go in, the FAFSA and CSS Profile open. Map which forms each college needs and avoid the errors that quietly cost families aid.

The Playbook reads your college list and says which schools want which forms; then the FAFSA and CSS Profile walkthroughs carry you step by step. Four of Priya's seven schools want the CSS Profile, sequenced before her November 1 early deadline.

How the Aid! Playbook Works

Senior fall, you submit with everything in place.

Priya Nair is a fictional student; schools, dates, and scores shown are illustrative.

For Parents and Guardians

Invited, Not Installed.

EduFinder's family link starts with the student's yes. Priya sends the invite from her dashboard; her mom, Meera, confirms it by email and gets a family panel in a free account of her own. Nothing is shared until she confirms, and Priya can stop sharing at any time.

Same Day, Two Screens.

One October evening, one application season, two very different screens. Flip between them: everything on Meera's side is a name, a date, a status, a score, or a count.

Priya's Board · Tuesday, 9:14 PM

Next Action: Finish Georgetown's Community Essay before November 1.

Georgetown · Community Essay · Draft 2 · 412 Words

"Whenever my grandmother needed a form explained, the family sent me. What started as translation became..."

Grounded Feedback · 2 Suggestions Open

Profile & Chances · Georgetown: Reach · High Confidence · Strongest Factor: Course Rigor

Every word, every reason, every report: hers alone.

Meera's Family Panel · The Same Tuesday

Your Children

priya.nair@example.com

Confirmed

The SAT! Series

Practice Test Goal

2 of 3 Tests

Latest: 44/54 (81%)

The Roster! Board

Application Progress

7 Schools on Their College List

3 Reach 2 Target 2 Safety

Essays: 6 Not Started · 4 Drafting · 2 Done

The Shortlist! Builder

Shortlist Progress

5 Schools · Generated October 14, 2023 · Survey Complete

The Resolve! Planner

Course Plan Progress

AP: 3 Picks + 2 Backups · Generated March 9, 2024

Send a Reminder

One reminder per tool every 24 hours. It emails Priya; it never opens her work.

No essay text. No answers. No explanations. No chance reports.

Priya and Meera Nair are fictional; schools, dates, scores, and counts shown are illustrative. In the app, each service's family card sits on its own dashboard tab.

Exactly What a Confirmed Invite Shares.

The invite email, the confirm page, and the live family panel all render this one list from a single file, and a test pins this page to the same source, so no surface can quietly promise more or less. It is addressed to you, the student, because you are the one who says yes:

  • How many SAT practice tests you have completed
  • Each completed test's score and the date you took it
  • Whether you have a practice test in progress right now
  • The schools on your Roster college list, with each school's application status, reach/target/safety bucket, planned round and deadline, decision release date, and deposit deadline
  • How many of your Roster essays are not started, drafting, or done (counts only; never a title or a word of writing)
  • The school names on your generated Shortlist, the date it was generated, and how many of the Shortlist survey's questions you have answered (a count only; never an answer)
  • The AP course or IB subject names on your generated Resolve course plan, whether it is an AP or an IB plan, the date it was generated, and how many of the planner's questions you have answered (a count only; never an answer)

Nothing else: not your answers to any test, survey, or planner question, not the explanations you read, not your notes, checklists, or AI suggestions, not the fit paragraphs or AI reasoning behind your matches and plans, not your essay writing, not your chance reports or coaching, not your profile, and none of your other EduFinder work.

A Free Seat of Their Own.

The family panel is a window, not the whole account. Meera's login runs every tool first-hand: she works through the FAFSA and CSS Profile walkthroughs in the Aid! Playbook herself, builds an affordability-aware shortlist of her own to compare at the dinner table, and reads the same Learning guides. All of it free, and none of it touches Priya's workspace.

Student Reviews 5.0 Average

Students at Top Schools, in Their Own Words.

Five EduFinder students, one on each of the five services that carry the path from ninth grade to the final aid form.

"My activities were a pile of things I had signed up for with no through-line. The Pursuit! Atlas sequenced them into a plan across two years, told me which ones were worth going deeper on and which to let go, and pointed me at real opportunities I could act on that term."
Elena V. Stuyvesant High School · United States
"I had twenty colleges on a messy list and no idea which were realistic. The Shortlist! Builder found the possibilities, and Roster's Profile & Chances area was honest about where I stood. For the first time my list felt like a plan."
Minjun K. Choate Rosemary Hall · United States
"As an IB student, building the six-subject package was overwhelming. Resolve! Planner mapped my courses term by term, argued each HL and SL choice against the majors I was aiming at, and gave me TOK and EE guidance my counselor could actually check."
Rachel T. United World College of South East Asia · Singapore
"I had a strong story but kept telling it the boring way. Roster's idea library pulled ranked angles from my own answers, each with a clear tension to build around. It did not write a word for me; it showed me which idea was worth the essay."
Yuhan L. Wycombe Abbey · United Kingdom
"Financial aid as an international student felt like a black box. The Aid! Playbook walked me through the CSS Profile step by step and flagged the mistakes families like mine tend to make. I finally understood the forms instead of fearing them."
Haoran W. Phillips Academy Andover · United States

Shared by EduFinder students. Last names abbreviated for privacy.

Fair Questions, Straight Answers.

What we would want to know before trusting an admissions tool.

What Is EduFinder Actually Built On?

EduFinder is built on specialist materials and structured admissions data: human-written SAT-style questions based on released-test patterns, acceptance-record calibration for chance bands, hand-curated college data, and intake flows designed by educators. AI helps synthesize a student's answers into the final output, but the product is the underlying data, structure, and judgment.

Will This Write My Essay for Me?

No. Roster Essays does not write the essay. Its idea library returns ranked angles built from your own thirty-nine answers, and Draft feedback quotes only sentences you wrote, describes fixes, and asks questions. It never writes or rewrites a word of the essay for you.

Can I See a Sample First?

Yes. Every service is free to use, and you can open a full sample before you sign in. Shortlist, Resolve, Pursuit, Roster, and Aid each provide a realistic sample, and the unified Roster sample includes Profile & Chances, College List, and Essays. Exam practice lives in the Test Bank, where The SAT! Series has a three-question demo that needs no account.

Who Built This?

A small team of educators with US-college admissions experience, based in Seoul, plus engineers. The same people designed the question bank, the prediction model, and the editor, and tested them in real classrooms before anything shipped publicly. The "Who We Are" page has the longer version.

What Happens to My Answers?

Your intake answers, saved work, and reports stay in your account. We do not share them, sell them, or use them to train models. You can delete the whole account from settings at any time.

Can My Parents See My Work?

Only if you invite them or accept an invite they send you; nothing is shared until you say yes. A confirmed link shows them names, dates, statuses, scores, and counts: your practice-test scores, the schools and deadlines on your lists, and how many essays sit at each stage. Never an essay word, a test answer, a note, or a chance report. You can stop sharing at any time, and a parent's own free account can run every tool first-hand.

Ready when you are. Every service above is free with one account.

Create Your Free Account