When your family is doing college planning for the first time, trustworthy answers matter.
CollegeHound helped us understand what to do next, and I helped test whether its answers were right.
I'm Rohan, a rising senior and CollegeHound intern.
My family was new to the college application process, so we could not rely on past experience to tell us whether advice was accurate. During my internship, I tested CollegeHound carefully, documented what happened, and reported findings the team could verify and act on.
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Meet Rohan
CollegeHound student intern
I spent the summer using CollegeHound the way a rising senior actually would, then checking something harder than whether it worked: whether what it told me was true.
- Why I cared
- My family was going through this process for the first time
- What I tested
- The product end to end, then the factual accuracy of what it said
- What I reported
- Everything that did not work, written up clearly enough to act on
- How I worked
- Remotely, on open-ended tasks, with no answer key to check against
- New skills
- Structured testing, fact-checking, and clear written reporting
- What I'm proud of
- Reports the team could act on without re-checking them first
Because my family was doing this for the first time, I learned that advice does not just need to sound helpful. It needs to be right.
What is hard to know the first time
When your family has not done this before, the hardest part is not always the work. It is knowing what matters, what comes first, and which information to trust.
You do not know which advice matters
Every deadline, recommendation, and next step can sound equally urgent when you have no prior experience.
There is no obvious order
College lists, essays, applications, scholarships, and testing all compete for attention at once.
You may not have someone to verify the answer
When your family is doing this for the first time, it can be hard to tell the difference between advice that sounds confident and advice that is actually correct.
The work that was mine
Why accuracy mattered to me
Because my family was going through this for the first time, I could not assume an answer was right just because it sounded polished. I tested the product like a real student would, followed each path, checked the facts, and reported exactly what happened. Everything I reported was investigated and fixed.
An AI should say what it knows, show where the answer came from, and be honest when it is uncertain.
How I made a report trustworthy
Finding a problem is the easy half. Writing it up so someone else can confirm it is what makes it useful.
Reproduce the issue
Repeat the same steps and confirm that the result happens consistently, not once.
Separate fact from interpretation
Write down what the product actually did before explaining why it may be a problem.
Give the team something usable
The steps, the expected result, the actual result, and enough detail for someone else to verify it.
Ground Truth Award · CollegeHound Summer Internship 2026
Rohan won the Ground Truth Award
His reports became the reference standard.
Reproducible
The team could follow his steps and see the same result.
Accurate
His factual findings consistently held up on review.
Complete
Enough context to act on without guessing.
“Awarded to the intern whose reports became our reference standard.
In product testing, ground truth is the verified reality against which everything else is measured.
Rohan was ours. He never assumed an answer was right because it sounded right — he followed the steps, checked the facts, and wrote up what he found so clearly that anyone could confirm it. When we needed to know what really happened, we started with his reports.”
Ed Psyk and Shelley Psyk · CollegeHound co-founders
What changed for my family
“This is the first time my family has been part of the college application process, and we were feeling very lost on how to approach it. With CollegeHound, the path ahead looks much clearer and less stressful.”
Rohan · CollegeHound student intern
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