Nerd Apply, a privacy-first platform focused on outcome-driven college counseling, announced it has raised $3.2 million in seed funding to expand distribution and strengthen its security, compliance, and data governance infrastructure. The round included participation from Riverpark Ventures, Alumni Ventures, 1.61 Ventures, and a group of angel investors that includes Gokul Rajaram and David Krane (CEO and Managing Partner of Google Ventures).
The company said the new capital will also support ongoing product development aimed at making qualitative admissions outcomes data more usable inside counselor workflows and real-world advising conversations. In addition, Nerd Apply plans disciplined investments across go-to-market and customer success, along with selective hiring across engineering, product, and other roles as it scales.
Nerd Apply positions its platform as an answer to a counseling environment where students and families are often forced to make high-stakes decisions using a mix of rankings, anecdotes, and shifting headlines, while counselors are expected to deliver evidence-based guidance with limited reliable data. The company aggregates completed admissions outcomes shared by counselors and makes them available in a fully de-identified format, enabling more realistic guidance without exposing student identities.
The company says its longer-term ambition is to become a trusted infrastructure for qualitative admissions outcomes data, giving counselors a way to widen student options, reduce uncertainty, and increase transparency in a process that changes year to year. In describing current adoption, Nerd Apply said it is trusted by more than 500 counselors and is powered by over 100,000 real applications, positioning the platform as a tool counselors can use to better understand admissions patterns, set clearer expectations, and help families reduce anxiety, particularly by encouraging exploration beyond a narrow set of ultra-selective institutions.
KEY QUOTES:
“Students are making life-shaping decisions with incomplete or misleading information. By aggregating real admissions outcomes from real students, we give counselors the clarity so they can guide students with confidence. This seed round allows us to scale responsibly while maintaining our standards for privacy, security, and trust.”
Braden Weissman and Cooper Weissman, Co-Founders, Nerd Apply
“I’m proud to be an investor in Nerd Apply, a company that is fundamentally shifting college counseling from guesswork to data-driven certainty. By leveraging the world’s largest dataset of successful applications, they are empowering advisors with the objective insights needed to help every student find their best-fit path.”
Gokul Rajaram, Angel Investor
“Nerd Apply’s organic traction reflects a stellar team that is deeply committed to bringing clarity to an increasingly difficult to navigate college admissions process. The company sits at the intersection of data infrastructure, analytics, and trusted platforms – areas where their exceptional group of investors have spent decades operating. I’m excited to participate in one of the most influential rounds in education technology that is already delivering meaningful education outcomes at scale.”
Chris Moore, Partner, Redpoint Ventures
