Clark Student Develops Social Site For Int'l College Kids
Photo/Shaun Tolson
Fayaz Taher, a grad student at Clark University created goswoop.com to help international students learn more about American colleges.
A new interactive web site developed by a graduate student at Worcester-based Clark University is aimed at helping colleges bolster their enrollment by reaching out to international students.
Fayaz Taher, 24, is pursuing a master’s degree in international development and social change at Clark, and is the co-founder of goswoop.com, an online community and resource for international students studying, or planning to study here in the United States.
“It’s a recruiting tool in a sense,” he said. “It’s a site for the international student to find the right college and for colleges in the states to recruit international students.”
The New Facebook
The web site parallels Facebook in many ways. Students log in to the site and create their own profiles. Once they’re logged in, students can search for a potential school by name, location or by concentration. The site offers a dynamic, internal messaging system where students can interact with other students to get inside information on particular schools. In fact, affiliated schools have the ability to reach out and contact the students, as well.
While Facebook provides students with the ability to post a lot of personal information, Taher said that goswoop.com offers students a place where they can create a solely academic profile. It allows them to post a professional, academic-oriented snapshot of themselves without revealing too much of their personal lives.
A native of Bangladesh, Taher said the catalyst for creating the site was his own experiences and difficulties as an international student, first at Babson College and now at Clark. The site’s development was also informed by his business partners, Cort Johnson and Jake Cacciapaglia, who had similar experiences studying abroad in Spain.
“All of the troubles that we faced are the motivation to keep it going,” he said.
Taher said that the options for researching schools internationally were relatively limited when he began looking in 2002. At the time, he had only a college’s web site and Google searches to help him make the right choices. Now, with goswoop.com, he can offer the 1,000 registered students (the majority of whom live in India, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and Pakistan) a place to ask questions and receive answers from faculty members and students at any one of the site’s 13 university partners.
“Visa concerns, financial aid, weather, social life… all of these questions pertain to the international student, but we don’t know where to go to find the answers,” Taher said.
The number of schools affiliated with the web site may be modest now, but Taher wants to add 100 more. The trouble, of course, is convincing universities that the program is legit and that it’s worth the $5,000-per-year investment to partner with the site.
On top of that, he oftentimes must reassure schools that the web site is not intended to replace the international and study abroad administrators, but to provide them with an additional outlet to share their school’s messages and connect with prospective students.
“Education is a very slow process,” he said. “We have to be patient.”
Local Support
Worcester Polytechnic Institute is one of two Central Massachusetts schools to sign with goswoop.com. The partnership is only a few months old, which means the school has yet to take full advantage of what the site offers, but Michelle Carrara, the senior assistant director in charge of international admissions, said it was the site’s comparable style to Facebook that convinced the school of its potential.
“This generation is so interested in new media and Facebook,” she said. “But it [goswoop.com] is geared toward international students and that was very attractive.”
Currently, the web site makes money only through the annual university subscriptions. In the future, Taher plans to charge students what he calls “micro transaction fees” for additional services that his team is currently developing, such as connecting students to appropriate financial aid officers or experts specializing in SAT exam preparation.
But there are other obstacles, as well, namely funding.
Over the past two years, Taher used $50,000 in angel funding from an industrialist and philanthropist in Bangladesh to develop the web site and partner with the 13 involved universities. But to reach his current goal of 100 additional schools, Taher is looking for another $500,000 investment.
With a down economy, however, investors are more reluctant with their funding, but Taher isn’t worried.
“We’re approaching people with the attitude that we’re young, we’re fresh, and this is the first time that we’re fundraising and that they should help us with the process,” Taher said. He also said that he’s pointing to an efficient use of his previous funds as a sign that his team can find innovative ways to stretch a dollar.
Ultimately, Taher knows that as a reluctance to spend continues to percolate throughout the investor community, fewer individuals are likely to get involved. But he sees a silver lining to that, as well.
“We’re doing it (fundraising) because we believe in this project,” he said. “And when we find someone who believes in the project, too, that’s the perfect partner.”
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