By: Henry Woodbridge (CEO / Founder)
The primary mission of Mapt is to help provide every family access to the tools and services necessary to help optimize the future education of high school students. We don’t just want to help students get into college; we want to help them get into the right college to help them graduate and succeed in life.
The Bigger Picture
We’re all aware of the challenges that are rapidly evolving into crises today. The solution to every crisis we face has one commonality: a need for educated people to apply their knowledge and skills to find solutions. We won’t solve climate change without first educating the next generation of engineers; we won’t solve the housing crisis without educating the next generation of architects and builders; we won’t solve food shortages without educating the next generation of biologists and farmers. We can’t protect our democracy without an educated electorate.
Therefore, our mission isn’t just to help improve the lives of individuals but also to help improve society as a whole. We aim to make the world a better place, one productive, educated, happy person at a time.
The college admissions consulting marketplace
The admissions consulting marketplace is polarized. On one extreme, overworked public school counselors get, on average, 15 minutes to talk to a student about their college plan. On the other hand, there are private college admissions consultants charging high-income families $120,000/year to guarantee admission to Ivy League universities. These two forces have left a massively underserved gap in the middle of the market where most US families can’t receive adequate support. Mapt sits in between these two extremes and serves as a rational voice for families to take a middle way.
We built Mapt with the families in mind who couldn’t pay $250/hour for an education consultant. We built it for the students AND parents to get honest and straightforward college planning support. Using a SaaS subscription model, modern product design, and AI, Mapt costs a fraction of what consultants charge and achieves much of the same value. We estimate roughly 15 million U.S. families don’t have access to professional college planning support.
We recently launched a subscription offering on our mobile platform for families to:
- Chat 1:1 with an admissions advisor and get personalized support to improve their application, start passion projects, or get application essay feedback.
- Build a balanced list of colleges with financial, academic, and social fit for the student.
- Follow a guided admission checklist and set notifications for key dates.
- See the real cost of college and the average salary for each major at that school.
- Take assessments and complete guided journals to increase self-awareness, learn about different careers, and reduce mental health-related stress.
We have to ask the question: is college worth it?
There’s an emerging trend of people questioning the overall benefits of a college education.
Their common rebuttal to pursuing college is that the rising costs of tuition don’t justify the economic return after graduation. Others raise concerns that college doesn’t prepare you for a productive career. Both of these perspectives are justified critiques, and families that ignore them are making a mistake. We also believe that college institutions and administrators who don’t work to improve this should be held accountable. We’d also be the first to concede that if you don’t financially plan for college it might not be worth it.
The problem with this argument is that it leads to decision-making akin to “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” People overcorrect their behavior instead of making sound financial plans for college, applying to scholarships, FAFSA, or attending a school with a strong financial fit. Instead, they choose not to continue their education. However, this behavior is completely understandable because planning for college is hard. Consider that 90% of FAFSA applications are filled out incorrectly, $100 million in scholarships and $2 billion in grants go unclaimed each year, and students may need to write as many as 20 college application essays during their senior year.
The benefits of college
Financial
Those with a college degree:
- Increase their lifetime earnings by over $1M.
- Increase employment stability by over 50% during recessions.
- Gain crucial social capital.
- In 2021, full-time workers ages 22 to 27 with just a bachelor’s degree made a median annual wage of $52,000, compared with $30,000 for full-time workers of the same age with a high school diploma and no degree.
The economic positives are clear—if you can financially plan for college and graduate without large student loans, you put yourself in an exciting financial position for life. Students from families with income in the top 20% have a 60% rate of graduating college, compared to students in the bottom quintile with 16% of graduating college.
Health
Health outcomes are also drastically impacted by continuing education.
- Graduating college decreases your chance of smoking from 27% down to 8%.
- By 2011, the prevalence of diabetes had reached 15 percent for adults without a high school education, compared with 7 percent for college graduates.
- Between 1990 and 2008, the life expectancy gap between the most and least educated Americans grew from 13 to 14 years among males and from 8 to 10 years among females. The gap has been widening since the 1960s.
- College graduates are 40% less likely to hold medical-related debt (the leading cause of personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S.)
The health outcomes associated with education rates make sense when you think about the economic impacts of graduating college, as well as the literacy and critical thinking skills needed to navigate the complexities of the U.S. health insurance industry.
Civic Engagement
Regardless of your political beliefs, we all agree that higher civic engagement and voter turnout create a healthier and just society.
- For individuals aged 18-24, a college degree increases voter turnout in presidential elections from 34% to 59% (Tufts Research)
Political narratives vs. reality
A Pew Research study in 2021 showed that the majority of graduates said their college education was extremely or very useful when it came to helping them grow personally and intellectually (79%), opening doors to job opportunities (70%) and developing specific skills and knowledge that could be used in the workplace (65%).
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