Friends of the Koala, Rob Malicki and Marine Hautemont know a thing or two about hard decisions.
In early March, as the Covid pandemic was gathering momentum in Europe, they made the heartbreaking decision to close down their international ed business, AIM Overseas. After 13 years building Australia’s first independent study abroad provider for Australian students, with 900+ participants per year, it wasn’t the end they’d envisaged.
But every cloud has a silver lining. With time on their hands, closing the door on their business meant opening the door to something unexpected.
“It was an entrepreneur’s dream” says Rob, “Two years of enforced holiday, travelling Australia (and eventually Europe too) as a family.”
However, as they travelled, they were already on the lookout for the next big “problem” they wanted to solve. And finally, last year, they found it.
“I was having coffee with a friend” explains Marine “and she was telling me how complex it was to help her year 11 son to narrow down his university options. I was taken aback, since hundreds of thousands of people are navigating this journey at any one time. Surely it should be easy?”
That conversation led Marine and Rob down a rabbit hole which ended with a surprising conclusion: that very little has changed in decades in the way that domestic students research and apply for their university. Each state, and university, has a different approach to admissions, whilst information is inconsistent and spread across multiple websites.
The two are now releasing their solution to this challenge. It’s called Choosing Your Uni, and incorporates both latest-generation AI technology, and content based on Rob’s experience as one of Australia’s leading independent “Ed-fluencers” on YouTube.
The platform simplifies the often-overwhelming process of choosing the right discipline and finding the ideal university by offering personalised recommendations tailored to each student’s strengths, interests, and preferences. And it is all in one single platform.
“The platform features two core AI tools,” Marine says.
“The What to Study Quiz offers personalised career and field-of-study recommendations, while the UniMatch by CYU™️ tool shortlists universities based on criteria like location, size, facilities, and courses.”
The platform uses an interactive AI guide, called Lumen, to assist students to receive tailored advice so they can navigate their university decision journey with confidence. Lumen is based on CYU’s custom curated dataset, and powered by proprietary AI workflows. Some 300 students from half a dozen pilot schools in Sydney have already logged more than ten thousand of interactions with Lumen in the days since releasing the web app.
“AI is complex, so we’ve been focusing on getting the platform and user experience right” says Marine, “Lumen currently answers detailed questions about unis in Sydney, while the platform is in Beta.”
Support answering questions about universities Australia-wide, as well as postgraduate studies, and custom advice for international students, will be incrementally rolled out over the coming months.
A 1-minute video with the origin story of Choosing Your Uni can be found at https://vimeo.com/1019651441
Readers can create a free account at choosingyouruni.com
The koala wishes Rob and Marine well as they start their next chapter in supporting students.
