How many of us get to land at IIT’s and IIM’s? How many of us remain aware of the equal opportunities imparted by other colleges? The answer will be not many. There is a huge communication gap between colleges and students, and a large proportion of students remain unacquainted of the fact that there are other colleges across the country providing plethora of befitting opportunities. Collegespeaks.com comes up with a constructive way out, to bridge this gap between the colleges and students, completely different from the social networking sites prevalent across the web. Vidya Vyas, the conceptualizer of Collegespeaks tells us how she came upon this idea - “As students, we all want to come to know those lesser known facts of campuses. But such exchanges about campuses are generally restricted to coffee shops. In Collegespeaks, students and alumni can talk about things like the best snack in the canteen or the best faculty or the favourite hangouts when they bunk classes or even grapevines. So students or alumni, Collegespeaks could be their next coffee-break hangout!!!” Collegespeaks.com is the first dynamic website of its kind, which gives a peek into colleges through first hand experiences shared by students of the colleges. Current grads and alumni can Grade their colleges and talk about the prospects the college offers for junior batches. They can share their day-to-day campus activities and other useful information by interacting with other members of their own as well as others’ campuses. Everything from the fests, news to telltales, find place in Quotes. This will be a great help for students seeking admission in Indian campuses because unlike foreign universities whose websites are informative and updated, very few Indian campuses have their websites updated, not mentioning the vast majority who don’t realize the significance of having a website. There is no need for students to run across campuses to collect course and other information. All the information is just a click away, on a layout very friendly and non-congested, unlike the forums which are text only and pain to eyes. Asmita Sikarwar, class of 2006 IIPS, Indore, quotes- “The entire site is so cool and user friendly. Especially, the quotes section is something seen for the first time. The Grading takes just a couple of minutes and the search is great. At least, there are people who are noticing gaps and making sites to suit the Indian audience rather than following a herd by bringing a series of social networking sites and the likes.” Unlike social networking sites, where anyone is free to write anything, here every member’s identity is with respect to the college he/she has attended or is attending and the campus communities are moderated. For school-goer’s or other prospective students, the website presents an inside-the-campus view of their would be alma mater, even before they are actually a part of it. The users also can make use of the Search feature to search course information of various colleges across India. As Vidya Vyas rightly quotes- “I’ve always seen youngsters with that same one question, What next, the moment they are in 11th or 12th stds. For science students, it’s kind of implicit that they are landing up in some engineering or medical college. But what about the tonnes of new streams which are budding with a booming economy? Collegespeaks.com not just saves time spent by students in scouring through various websites looking for courses, but it also attempts to fill another major gap, ie, further inside information of colleges.” Most of the sites across the web keeping a database of colleges are not dynamic and even among these, many fail to keep the database updated. Collegespeaks.com takes care of this by providing an entire space to colleges, named College Corner, in order to keep the database updated. This space for colleges is as good as or in many cases, better than their own website. The templates are user friendly and hence updating can be done even by someone who isn’t techno savvy. The current database of more than 4000 Indian colleges is constantly being updated to add in the new colleges across the country. College Corner is thus an extended service to enable students form informed decisions by also the knowing the college’s stance together with the students’ views on one platform. For colleges, it’s certainly a good advertising medium where colleges can showcase their achievements without any hassles. With Quotes, Grades, Search and College Corner as the initial features, this start-up is all set to send revolutionary waves in the Indian web. So the next time you are looking for a course or have something to share about your campus, just log on to www.collegespeaks.com.