Bring your people: chosen support, guides, and worksheets

Nobody should have to figure this out alone

I was a first-generation college student. Nobody in my family had been through it before me, so I learned how to navigate college mostly on my own, with very little support. Later I spent a decade running financial aid at three Bay Area colleges, and I know how many students are in that same position today. They need as much guidance as they can get.

The research says the same thing. In a 2023 NACAC survey, 59% of young people who applied to college wished they'd had more support with their applications, and they felt most comfortable asking parents, family, and peers for help. Across everyone surveyed, ages 16 to 22, 68% said it's hard to find unbiased information about colleges at all. (NACAC, 2023 ↗)

The college search is full of moments where a student needs two things at once: a clear answer they can trust, and someone in their corner while they act on it.

Until now, admyt mostly helped with the first part, through Sage and Vibe Check. This update is about the whole journey. It adds better answers for the practical questions, better tools for thinking things through, and a way to invite the people who matter most to come along.

The hard part was doing that without taking the search away from the student. A parent who sees everything can turn a student's college search into the parent's college search. So every choice in this update starts from the same rule: the student decides who's in, and what they see.

Your chosen support

It would have been easy to build a "parent portal." But that assumes every student has a mom and dad who can help with this, and plenty of students don't. For a lot of students, the person who shows up is a grandparent, an older sibling, a coach, a teacher, or a mentor. When I was figuring it out myself, I would have needed exactly that kind of person.

So the student chooses, and that's why it's called your chosen support. The invite starts with a simple question: Who's in your corner? Then it asks what the student calls that person, with examples like "Mom, Grandpa, Coach Dre." Whoever they pick, the student is the one deciding who counts.

From their Profile, a student can invite up to two people. One small detail I love: the student also picks how that person sees their name, so the flow asks something like "How should Grandpa see your name?"

Everything starts off

A new invite shares nothing. The student turns on exactly what they want, and can change it anytime:

• My Schools, with your own “why I like it” notes
• Application stages
• Vibe Checks
• Your Sage Plan
• Visits & interviews
• Your financial aid checklist
• Parts of What Sage knows, like budget or location
• Worksheets you choose
• Individual Sage answers, one at a time

Before sending, the student sees a preview titled "Here's exactly what Mom will see," built from the same data the supporter will actually get. They can also hide a single school or a single Vibe Check without turning off a whole category.

Your Sage chat is never shared. Only answers you pick, one at a time.

Vibe Checks get one extra heads-up. They can include identity and belonging scores, so the invite flow says so plainly and points out that any single check can be hidden.

What supporters can do

A supporter signs in with a code sent to the invited email and gets their own simple board:

• See what's shared, and it stays live: new schools and Vibe Checks show up on their own.
• React and talk, with "Love it" and "Let's talk" on schools and tasks, plus a private notes thread for links, thoughts, and cheering.
• Help with the work. Students can hand a supporter tasks in their Sage Plan, like gathering tax documents, and the supporter checks them off.
• Suggest schools. Supporters can browse and suggest up to five schools at a time, with a note on why.

Suggestions without pressure

This was the part I thought about most. A suggestion from a parent can carry a lot of weight. So the student gets three choices for each one: heart it, run a Vibe Check, or pass. The supporter only ever sees "waiting" and then "reviewed." They never learn whether it was a heart or a pass, and a reviewed school can't be suggested again.

Hiding works the same way. A hidden school can still be suggested, so a supporter can't work out what's been hidden from them.

What supporters can't do

• Talk to Sage, or see any part of the student's chat
• See Fit Scores or anything personal in their own browsing
• Edit the student's schools, plan, or profile
• See other supporters, hidden items, or whether anything is hidden at all

And if a student stops sharing, it happens quietly. There's no email or alert. The supporter simply sees "Nothing shared right now," which looks exactly the same as never having been invited.

Emails that respect everyone's time

There are three: the invite itself, a nudge when a student hands over a task (at most one a day, and off with one click), and an optional weekly digest. Notes never trigger their own email.

How it's protected

This is the most sensitive thing I've built into admyt, since most students are 13 to 17. A few decisions under the hood:

• The student's data stays locked to the student. Supporters get no direct access to it. Everything they see comes through one tightly scoped view that's checked again on every request.
• Revoked, missing, and hidden all look the same. The system never confirms that something exists when someone shouldn't see it.
• Some things are private by design. Visit reflections can never be shared, and the database itself enforces it.
• The policies came first. The privacy policy and terms were updated for supporters before this launched.

Guides: answers you can trust

The questions that stress students and families out most are rarely about rankings. They're "Which parent goes on my FAFSA if my parents are separated?" and "How do I get my application fee waived?" Guides answer those questions in plain language, organized by where the student is in the process:

Every answer shows who it applies to, a "Good to know" note when there are limits, and links to its official sources with the date they were checked. Answers have a shelf life, too: 90 days after an answer's oldest source was checked, it's marked "May be out of date" until it's rechecked.

Sage uses the same guides. Ask Sage about fee waivers or the FAFSA in chat, and it can answer from a guide and link the official source, so students get the same checked answer either way. Once an answer is marked out of date, Sage stops citing it too.

How they were made, and what I held back

One AI model drafted each answer from official sources. A separate reviewer then reopened every source page and checked the answer against it, fixing 18 of the 43 along the way. A few didn't make it:

• One whose source page only returned a loading screen
• One whose only source was a brochure from 2006
• Two where the sources didn't fully support the answer
• One I held back myself because it listed contact details and deadlines that go stale fast

Guides are open to everyone, no account needed. If a question isn't covered yet, students can still ask Sage.

Checklists & worksheets: thinking on paper

Sage Plan already had checklists for applications, financial aid, and visits. This update adds a fourth, "Getting ready to enroll," which walks through everything from "yes" to day one.

It also adds three worksheets students can fill in, save, and print:

• Compare my schools, for laying offers and priorities side by side
• Visit reflection, for capturing how a campus actually felt, while it's fresh
• Enrollment steps, for keeping track of what's left before move-in

A student can share a worksheet with a supporter, one at a time. The exception is the visit reflection, which always stays private. How a campus felt is the student's to keep.

What's next

• Sage knowing about suggestions. Supporters' notes and suggestions don't reach Sage yet. That waits on a privacy and prompt-injection review.
• More guides, as students tell us which questions are missing

What I learned

Bring your people

If you're a student, read a guide, try a worksheet, and invite the one or two people you'd want beside you. If you're someone a student counts on, whether you're a parent, a relative, a coach, or a mentor, ask them to invite you. That part is up to them, on purpose.

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