OUR STORY
Our story begins with a search.
In May 2020, at the end of a Zoom call with my daughter's college counselor, I was advised to search each college's website for a virtual tour, then YouTube for student tours, then SCOIR, Naviance, PowerSchool, and other various sites, and the list goes on. My daughter (like the other 5 million kids who apply to college each year) decided to create a spreadsheet where she could collect and compare information for her top colleges. However, as her college search progressed, her college list changed – more than a few times – which meant she had to keep recreating the spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet became inefficient and, honestly, a pain in the neck. Which is why we built College Rover, a user-friendly tool for students and parents/guardians to quickly sift through mountains of information about colleges – then share, save, and download! We launched in May 2022 and want to say a big thank you to all of our subscribers this past year! In January 2023 we added the majors and degrees section, and in April 2023 we updated the user interface and loaded updated 2021-2022 data. Is this tool perfect? Not yet! We'll be working to add more functionality over time. In the meantime, we hope this tool helps with your search process. One more thing—we've built this tool for you and are interested in your feedback. Don't be shy about clicking the feedback button below to let us know what you think or to suggest things that may be helpful.
Best Regards, Bill
About Bill Townsend
Bill Townsend, whose parents were first-generation college graduates, grew up in Memphis, TN. Due to family circumstances with an ill parent, his undergraduate colleges were varied in experience and size:
- University of Memphis - large state school (Commuter)
- University of Tennessee Knoxville – large state school (Residential)
- Shelby State Community College - PBI, now Southwest Tennessee Community College
- University of Arizona - Spanish Immersion, Summer Guadalajara , Mexico
- Rhodes College – small liberal arts school
Bill then moved to Los Angeles and earned an MA in International Relations at the University of Southern California. He lived in SoCal for 35+ years, working at Nestle, Hunt-Wesson, Information Resources (CPG Market Research), and a variety of start-ups—all while raising his family of four children.
During the pandemic in the Spring of 2021, as part of her college search process, his daughter was forced to create a spreadsheet of 15-20 schools with 12-15 “facts” about each school. This time-consuming and laborious project would then be revised as her list of schools changed.
Bill felt this process was:
- Confusing, thanks to conflicting data and rankings from multiple sources.
- Impersonal, making it impossible to get a clear picture of which schools could be a true fit for his daughter.
- Inefficient, time-consuming, and a waste of time.
Students, parents, and educators need to spend time evaluating information, not searching for and assembling basic information. With his personal college
experience and with almost 20 years of working with big data, Bill decided to tackle this problem.
Bill’s Goal: Create a solution so anyone can easily access the best available data about colleges.
CollegeRover.com started as a tool focusing on “Four Year Colleges.” As Bill delved deeper into the data and considered what any high school student might need, he has added modules for both major areas of study at all levels and (soon) vocational schools.
Bill’s desire to make everyone’s school search easier came to fruition with the May 2023 launch of the full website, which is being recognized as an impartial source of data. Exclusive CollegeRover.com research was used by USA Today in their coverage of the Supreme Court’s recent Affirmative Action case ruling. Additional research insights from CollegeRover.com have been featured by the New York Post, Yahoo News, Inside Higher Ed, Quartz, Forbes, and dozens of other online publications, helping demonstrate Townsend’s commitment to demystifying the college search process with the right information.
