Get the most out of CollegeHound. Tips, tutorials, and best practices for organizing your college journey.
These articles explain how CollegeHound works, how it compares to the other ways families organize this process (spreadsheets, Naviance, consultants, AI chatbots), and why we built it the way we did.
Fair warning: we made the product, so we have opinions. We've tried to keep the comparisons honest about what each option does well, because the goal is a system your family will actually use.
CollegeHound could be free. We know exactly how we would do it. We chose not to. Here is why we charge a small monthly fee instead of selling your student's data, taking college advertising money, or letting sponsors shape our content.
Read moreA rising senior in our summer internship program independently benchmarked Scout against three major AI platforms across 16 college planning questions. Scout won 9 out of 16, and the reasons why tell you everything about what matters in AI college planning.
Read moreI asked both ChatGPT and CollegeHound's Scout to help plan a college road trip from Raleigh to Alabama. One gave me a list of schools on the map. The other gave me a plan my family could actually use.
Read moreYour Binder already has the raw material for a strong brag sheet. Here is how to use Scout to pull it all together so you can hand teachers something useful instead of starting from scratch.
Read morePrivate college consultants cost $5,000 to $10,000 or more. CollegeHound is free. But this is not a simple "cheap vs expensive" comparison. Here is what each one actually gives your family, where they overlap, and how to decide what your student needs.
Read moreNaviance is a powerful school tool. But it belongs to the school, not the family. Here is how CollegeHound and Naviance are different, where they overlap, and why families need their own system alongside whatever their school provides.
Read moreMost families do not lose their college planning to one big mistake. They lose it to a hundred small ones. A missed deadline here, a forgotten draft there, a scholarship that expired while sitting in someone's inbox. Here is what actually happens when families wing it, and what it costs.
Read moreEvery family's college planning starts with a spreadsheet. Most families outgrow it by junior year. Here is why spreadsheets stop working, what falls through the cracks, and how CollegeHound gives families a system that actually keeps up with the process.
Read moreChatGPT for college planning can be helpful when your family has a quick question. But college planning is not just a series of one-time questions. That is where families often need more than a chatbot.
Read moreThe Common App is an application platform. CollegeHound is a college prep workspace. That difference matters because students usually need both.
Read moreCollege planning tips, from one parent to another
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