Apply with Scoir — Chris Karnes

A partnership built to expand who gets to apply.

Scoir is a college and career discovery platform used by thousands of high schools. Most of the product is built around an existing relationship — counselors guiding students, schools connected to the platform. But a lot of students don't have that. No engaged counselor, no school on Scoir, no money for application fees.

The Coalition for College Access came to Scoir with a chance to reach exactly those students. If we could build the right product, we could give any student a free path to apply to colleges not on Common App — regardless of whether they'd ever heard of Scoir before. The deadline was August 1. We had eight months.

Research first, even on a tight timeline.

Eight months is tight, and the fastest way to spend it badly is to start drawing. I protected research time at the front of the schedule — partly because the students this was built for deserved better than a product built on assumptions, and partly because I knew I'd need evidence to win the argument I could see coming about architecture. Research wasn't the discovery phase. It was how I got the room to agree.

Landscape research

Started by understanding what was already out there — Common App, Coalition App, state-specific options. What did students find hard? Where were the gaps nobody was filling? What did colleges actually need on their end to process these applications?

Journey mapping

Mapped the full end-to-end process: partner and college setup, student discovery, application completion, document submission, delivery to college. Multiple user types, multiple handoff points. Getting this on paper early caught a lot of complexity before it became a design problem.

Focus groups

Talked to students who'd recently applied to college through existing platforms. What was confusing? What felt unnecessary? Real application experience is different from what people imagine it will be — and we needed to know the difference.

Usability studies

Ran observed sessions and workshops with rising seniors testing early prototypes. Two distinct user types throughout: students connected to a Scoir school, and students coming in completely cold with no account.

Student journey map — from first awareness through post-submission, across two user types

An application that felt like an application.

The most important early framing decision: this wasn't a feature inside Scoir. It was a standalone product that happened to live inside Scoir — and it needed to feel that way, especially for students arriving from a partner site who had never heard of Scoir before.

Animated walkthrough — the full application experience end to end

For existing Scoir users, the application connected directly to their profile — their data carried over automatically so they could go from college discovery to applying without starting over. The mobile and broader platform views below show how Apply sits within the product for that user type.

Apply with Scoir on mobile and within the broader platform

The argument for standalone — and the compromise that worked.

I pushed for standalone. Leadership wanted deeply integrated.

Leadership wanted the application gated behind full Scoir account setup — understandable, since every new account is platform growth. My position was that the gate would kill the product for exactly the students it was meant to reach. A student arriving cold from a partner site doesn't want to build a profile. They want to apply. I made the case as a business argument rather than a design preference: gate it and we optimize for accounts we were never going to get, because the students who bounce at signup are the entire premise of the partnership. That reframe is what moved the conversation.

A new design language, not confined to the existing system

The core Scoir design system was built for a different kind of product. Applying to college needed to feel different — more like a form, less like a platform. Rather than fork, I extended the system: new button styles, chip patterns, pill indicators, progress states, all built to belong to the platform rather than to my project. That was deliberate. Those components didn't stay in Apply — they were adopted across the rest of Scoir in later features built by other people. Designing for the system instead of for the deadline is how one project's work becomes everyone's.

The compromise: lightweight onboarding for new users

I didn't win the argument outright, and I don't think I should have. The version that shipped threaded it: students coming in cold create a minimal account — just enough to apply — while existing users get their profile pulled in automatically, and both paths converge once inside. Leadership got integration. Students got speed. Holding out for the pure standalone version would have cost political capital I needed for the rest of the build.

150,000 students. 500,000 applications.

We hit the August 1 deadline. The numbers came back fast, and they settled the argument.

In year 1, 65% of students who applied were not existing Scoir users — exactly the population this was built for, coming in cold through partner links. Had we gated it, that's the two-thirds of the product's audience we'd have lost at the door. I'd rather be able to point at a number than at a rationale, and this is the number.

The back-end built alongside the application (document uploads, recommendation requests, delivery to 181 colleges) was just as significant as the front-end, even if it's less visible. Getting the right documents from students, counselors, and teachers to colleges — reliably, at scale — was the harder problem, and it shipped.

150k

Students by Year 2

500k

Applications submitted

181

Partner colleges

65%

Non-Scoir users in Yr 1

Year 1: 61,000 students, 350,000 applications. Year 2: 150,000 students, 500,000 applications. 65% of year 1 applicants were brand new to Scoir — the two-thirds of the audience the gated version would have turned away at the door.

Building a free college application for students who need it most.

A partnership built to expand who gets to apply.

Research first, even on a tight timeline.

An application that felt like an application.

The argument for standalone — and the compromise that worked.

150,000 students. 500,000 applications.