LOS ANGELES, June 3 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — The CLIC, ( http://www.theclic.net ) a new online network that unites everyone in the college-bound process in one interactive community, announced today that students and institutions can begin signing up for its beta site. The network lets students, colleges, counselors, community groups and financial aid programs manage their entire college-connected experience from a single home page.
“The U.S. college preparation and application process is completely broken,” said CEO and founder DMA (Donna Michelle Anderson), the former director of a free college mentoring program in Los Angeles. “Teenagers endlessly search the Web for schools and financial aid, colleges are still snail-mailing catalogs based on test scores, and the same scholarship lists get thumb-tacked to counselors’ bulletin boards every year. We needed a ‘command central’ for everyone involved, and that’s how The CLIC Network got started.”
With 70% of American teens now using social networks on a regular basis, The CLIC offers a popular and powerful new solution to an often overwhelming process. The site’s widget-driven home pages feature insider blogs, IMs, video tips, announcements and the first master calendar of all college-related deadlines and events, maintained by both The CLIC and site users.
Once students complete an initial CLIC profile, a personalized home page instantly matches them to all of the colleges, community programs and financial aid they qualify for nationwide. Students also can actively subscribe to more dream schools and scholarships. Once they are linked to an institution, that institution’s announcements, deadlines and more populate the student’s home page. Students also can “splat” (send) resources they find with buddies on the site. “On The CLIC Network, kids can do more than chat, they can achieve,” said DMA.
The CLIC already has built interactive home pages for most of the nation’s high schools and four-year colleges as well as hundreds of community and scholarship organizations. Once an institution joins the network, it can target desired students across dozens of metrics, splat instant messages to their home pages and, soon, send texts to students’ mobile phones.
In the state of California, only 19 out of 100 high school freshmen are expected to graduate ultimately from college. That number plummets to eight out of 100 in cities such as Chicago. “We’re launching right now to maximize our audience and resources in time for the fall crunch across all grades.” said DMA. “The CLIC finally is going to centralize, simplify and democratize this country’s college-bound and college-attending experience.”
Based in Sherman Oaks, CA, the new CLIC Network lets students, families, counselors, colleges, and community and scholarship groups manage the entire college-connected experience from a single home page on a free shared network.
