High-school students who hate the alphabet soup of admissions testing may instead opt to Zinch.
Launched in April, Zinch is a Facebook-like Web site that allows students to show prospective schools more than their PSAT and SAT scores.
Applicants can create profiles that showcase their accomplishments and extracurricular activities and upload video, images and audio clips.
Last week, Yale University became the first Ivy League institution to say they would join the site's network, which includes more than 230 other colleges, including Tufts, Stanford and Rice universities.
Its primary purpose, said founder and CEO Mick Hagen, a junior at Princeton University, is to target students who did not perform well or did not take the PSATs and thus do not show up on the radar of top colleges.
"It's a tool for outreach, recruitment and better communication between student and college," Hagen said.
Admissions experts say that students who don't perform well on tests early in high school are often at a disadvantage, since top universities receive names of high scorers on the PSAT and focus their recruiting efforts on those students.
According to Chuck Hughes, the co-founder of the Road to College college consulting service, many top universities spend between $50,000 and $70,000 each year for names high scorers, though Penn Interim Dean of Admissions Eric Kaplan said the admissions office spends considerably less on its lists.
Yale officials say they hope the site will provide more options for students, regardless of test scores, to become familiar with the university.
The service will not be used during Yale's applicant evaluation process; officials will only use it to tell students how to get onto the school's mailing list for information sessions and printed materials.
"Our view on this is simply to be open to different ways that students might use to connect with us," said Yale Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel. "We can't know until we try them to what extent new technologies may or may not be useful to students or to Yale."
Penn, on the other hand, currently has no plans to utilize the site, instead relying on more traditional recruitment methods.
In addition to PSAT scores, Kaplan said Penn uses community-based recruiting techniques, such as participation in local college fairs.
The alumni network and secondary-school committees also represent Penn at recruitment events.
But with a network of nearly 180,000 high-school students from around the country and from over 20 countries, some experts argue it's a service worth trying.
"I think it's a great idea," Hughes said. "If you can get enough volume with legitimate credentials, it's an alternate to College Board."
