As I sit in my very quiet office this rainy Seattle afternoon, reflection drives my thoughts. While ups and downs come with the start-up territory, my reflections gravitate toward the ups, in particular what our growing team has been able to accomplish for counselors, students, and their families over this last year. I have learned so much hearing from you and discovering ways we can make your life easier, more fun, and less stressful while providing targeted solutions to help you make a difference. Thank you for joining us on our journey!

Inspiration Drove Innovation in 2019

Over the last year, your feedback has inspired us in countless ways, helping us think outside the box when it comes to the college-search process. Here are just a few highlights from 2019:

With over 3.2 million student preferences and over 120,000 ratings powering our college lists, we launched a beta version of college recommendations based on student card sorts in the Café.

A new Help Center was built for you to easily access tips and spark your ideas.

Being part of the University of Washington Human-Centered Design and Engineering Department Usability Study gave our team new ways of thinking about how to make the student experience even better.

Our acceptance as a member of the AWS EdStart Program widened our capacity for innovation as we have been able to access the latest development tools and connect with amazing partners.

Sharing our vision and opening up the discussion on what matters most to college success in EdSurge allowed us to reflect on our goals and connect with many more innovators who will help bring you better tools in the future.

Becoming a partner with GuidedPath came hand-in-hand with some great videos to help you maximize all of the features of Corsava.

Giving a session Looking Beyond The Rankings: Exploring Emotional Preferences To Find The Right College Fit at the SuperACAC conference with my co-presenters Adam Miller (Whitman College), Christine Bowman (Colleges That Change Lives and Southwestern University) and Kathleen W. Odell (Design Tech High School) gave us all an opportunity to brainstorm and share better ways to help students and counselors find a great college fit.

Talking to many of Corsava’s high school and IEC users at NACAC brought new insights for future features and kept us focused on how to fill the big gap in helping students think about college fit in a whole new way.

But most of all, it is knowing that we have helped over 20,000 students, attending more than 3,800 high schools around the world, discover what matters most to them as they start their college searches. This is the ultimate driver for us at Corsava. My original vision of taking the hardcopy cards and putting them in the hands of students, no matter where they are, is becoming a reality.

I am reminded that each day we can work to make changes for the better, for those around us and for ourselves, with each of our actions bringing the possibility of positive change. In the case of Corsava, we will do our utmost to build more powerful ways to help students understand what matters to them, help families feel less stressed and overwhelmed, and help counselors maximize their impact.

I predict that 2020 is going to be a great year and the start of an even better decade.