...
Every year, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors tackle the challenge of finding the "right" college, the living and learning environment in which they will spend their next four years. In the process of finding the right school, prospective college students frequently travel to schools in order to take campus tours, attend information sessions, and sit in on classes. Parents and guidance counselors can also be heavily involved in the search process. Together, students, families, and counselors must identify candidate schools that make sense for a student based on his or her interests and strengths. Students and their families plan trips, often hoping to explore multiple colleges in a single trip while taking in the sights and sounds of the area. From identifying schools of interest within a given geographic area to making travel arrangements, the process of planning a college trip can be challenging and frequently requires accessing a variety of websites. Students and parents must balance travel logistics and other time constraints, such as campus tour and information session schedules, during the time-consuming process of designing their college trip itineraries.
# minimal knowledge of the geographic area, lack of consistency in college websites, and
# (for the student, parents, guidance counselors or anyone else involved in the college process).
# School tour and information session times are not consistent across college websites and are not available from centralized information sources.
...