Would helping me only help me?

There are countless students burdened with tuition debt. So, why should you help me? One reason is that my debt is interfering with my ability to help other students avoid debt and succeed in their pursuit of higher education and what lies beyond that.

Why am I doing this?

Not everything is Google-able or YouTube-able. Their algorithms are designed for them. Skiveo is designed for you.  

As Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor with a net worth of $3.3 billion said, "the best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve."

So, what is the problem on which Skiveo is founded?

Exclusivity.

Certain demographics of students and their parents simply are not aware of the best (and honest) college admissions strategies and of how well a given program would fit their students. 

The corporate bent of colleges and the concentration of YouTube videos and campus tours on essentially every non-academic, non-career enabling aspect of a degree program has reduced transparency, I would argue, to a detrimental degree.

For one, college can cost so much—as unglamorous and pragmatic as professional awareness may sound, its neglect really isn’t sound.

This brings me to the second of three points. While college admissions is an evidently broken or somewhat inequitable system, statistics indicate that at least some years of college are needed to embark on professional paths.

But how easy would walking that path be with the trillions of dollars of debt that weighs upon the backs of US students and postgrads.

Skiveo seeks to specifically introduce users to debt free paths to a degree, especially those that flow from the Ivy League and top 20 schools.

Given the earned incomes of women and minorities who’ve attended Ivy League institutions, compared to their white male counterparts, recent research indicates that Ivy degrees can indeed pay off for this demographic, which almost exactly overlaps with the demographics Skiveo seeks to empower.

Empower with what exactly?

With admissions, matriculation, and enrollment mentors who’ve recently graduated from or are currently attending Ivy League and top 20 schools.

And with professional opportunities and resources that some in the Ivy League (and top 20) network at times overlook and fail to leverage for themselves.

So, the approach is two-pronged from your perspective:

1. Tap into an Ivy League mentors network to become competitive in the admissions game.

2. If rejected and if qualified (see video), mediate access to paths within the Ivy League network for potential professional outcomes, similar to those of Ivy grads.

What is Skiveo exactly?

Skiveo aims to become a live mentoring platform for students and young professionals; it would also be equipped with prerecorded video courses designed to guide students through the college admissions process, namely the Ivy League admissions process, and through matriculation at those and similar universities to make the process of seeking and surviving higher education interactive and more equitable. 

Current mentors: 

​

http://skive0.com/mentors​

So, why are you crowdfunding for Skiveo?

It is difficult for me to financially invest in Skiveo's short- and long-term objectives because I am still in thousands of dollars of debt (more details below). The income I make as a teacher and support coordinator (an indirect service provider for the developmentally disabled) is simply not enough.

That's what this campaign is for.

I don't expect you to alleviate all of my debt. But there are some debts that are pressing, preventing me from further pursuing my education, and will strain or sever my financial relationship with Skiveo.

A short academic history

I'll rewind to my senior year of high school. I went to a public high school in New Jersey.

I was one of those people who applied to as many colleges and universities as I did because of a deep-seated insecurity. I felt that the only way I would get into any place was by leveraging math, i.e. increasing the probability of someplace accepting me by applying to place after place after place. I was, of course, shocked to learn that no one rejected me (out of eleven schools, 10 accepted me and Harvard waitlisted me).

I chose Princeton and graduated in 2015 with a degree in Molecular Biology.

It took me five years to graduate because I took a gap year for personal reasons.

While Princeton contributed grants toward my education, I still accumulated debt. Let's fast forward to 2016 when I enrolled in a post-baccalaureate program at the University of Pennsylvania under the impression that I would be able to pay out-of-pocket. That plan failed to bear out for my third and final semester in the program so I amassed additional debt.

Neuroscience dreams and Ramadan epiphanies

Despite my long-term ambition to become a neuroscientist (so far, I've developed two original models; one regarding olfactory information processing and the other, the etiopathogenesis and novel treatment of Parkinson's disease, which after Alzheimer's, is the second most oft-occurring neurodegenerative disorder), I had and went through with a completely unforeseen idea during the Ramadan of 2017.

An obvious disadvantage

My sister had been applying to colleges and while I was picking her up from a summer class, I was struck with a strange, but obvious realization.

Some people have to apply to and even consider attending colleges sight unseen. Not everyone can afford to travel to out-of-state or international universities. And even for those who accept invitations to visit their potential campuses after the acceptance/rejection period, it is not necessarily clear which university would most benefit them.

Gaps the imagination cannot fill

Because choosing where to go to college is a decision those who have never been there have never made before, their imagination attempts, sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully, to fill in the gaps that campus tours and weekend visits cannot fill. This failure is supported by research and by T. Wilson of UVA and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University.

And what about before this stage? When I was applying to colleges, my support predominately came from physical books and online samaritans. My guidance counselor and English teacher helped but the endeavor was a burden that I primarily bore, by the will of Allah.

So, what was the idea?

The original idea was to connect prospective students with current students over live video so the former could see their potential campuses and fields of study in real time before committing to any particular institution. Beyond that, the idea that formed that Ramadan expanded. I wrote and filed a patent detailing that expansion but lost the filing date because I didn't have the minimum $5000 to secure it.

The plan

Regardless, the idea is viable despite the loss. The company has high-achieving mentors (current students) who are alumni and current students at three universities, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and the Washington University School of Medicine.

The plan, although ambitious, is to secure high-achieving mentors from domestic and international universities.

What's the problem? What does this have to do with your debt?

Since I don't work full-time and have not secured full-time work, the majority of what I make from my part-time work goes to the debt I've been unable to settle. So, even if I wanted to invest my income into this startup, it would be hard for me to do that to any considerable degree because it is a moral imperative that I prioritize and first pay back those I owe.

Moreover, I cannot progress in my education because Ph. D. programs require transcripts from all of the institutions that you've attended and because I still owe the University of Pennsylvania, they will not release my transcript. Therefore, I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Where would my money go exactly?

$14,088 is owed to Princeton University; the piecewise crowdfunding is strategic.

The remainder of the fundraising objective would be at least 8% of the sum, to compensate for the 8% LaunchGood fee and additional card processing fees.

What if I can't donate but want to support your startup in another way?

The name of the startup is Skiveo.

The goal is to bring the transition from high school to college to the 21st century through one device, the camera on your phone.

We hope that this will make institutions of higher education more accessible to college applicants, especially low-income, minority, first-generation, and international students.

With Skiveo, prospective students would be able to bypass the misleading, incomplete, and/or irrelevant information that can result from researching colleges and universities online.

Instead, they would be able to see and hear real information from visible, unscripted, and relatable people in real time, allowing them to engage in substantive conversations that, hopefully, better guide them through the transition to college, namely applying to college, choosing the one that fits best, and moving to college, an environment that I believe students only learn more about after matriculating.

Share Skiveo with any debt-averse student that you feel would benefit.

"Whoever guides someone to goodness will have a similar reward." Rasulullah SAW (Sahih Muslim 1893)

More records:

When I was at Princeton University, a thesis (below) was required to graduate.

Thank you for reading/watching/looking/staying.

Amina