We spent $3,000 each on college counseling.
Then we built something better.

During junior year, we were completely lost. Neither of us had family who’d been through the American college application system, and our school counselor was managing hundreds of students. Weeks went by without a reply to our emails. We’d show up to meetings and realize our counselor had confused us with someone else.

So we each paid over $3,000 for private college counselors. Money our families stretched to afford. What we got was disappointing. Generic school lists pulled from the same databases anyone can access. Essay feedback that barely went beyond “make it more personal.” Deadline reminders we could’ve set up in Google Calendar. Ten hours of someone’s time at $300 an hour, for decisions that would shape the next four years of our lives.

The thing that stuck with us: most of what they did wasn’t hard. The school matching was filtering a database. The essay coaching was pattern recognition. The organization was a spreadsheet. We were paying thousands for work that technology could do better, faster, and for a fraction of the cost.

Blueprint is our answer to that. We’re not a VC-funded startup with a marketing budget. We’re two seniors bootstrapping this with our own savings while finishing school ourselves. We built it because we think every student, not just the ones who can scrape together $3,000, deserves real guidance through the application process.