Nerd Apply Raises $3.2M Seed Round to Power Outcome-Driven College Counseling

New funding will scale a privacy-first platform that helps counselors adapt as admissions outcomes change year to year

NEW YORK, Jan. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Nerd Apply, a privacy-first platform for outcome-driven college counseling, today announced it has raised $3.2 million in seed funding. The round included participation from Riverpark Ventures, Alumni Ventures, 1.61 Ventures and a group of highly notable angel investors including Gokul Rajaram and David Krane, CEO and Managing Partner of Google Ventures. The new capital will be used to scale distribution, deepen the company's security, compliance, data governance infrastructure, and enable overall company growth.

Additional angel investors in the round include Jeff Crowe, Managing Partner of Norwest Ventures and Chris Moore, Partner at Redpoint Ventures. The funding will also support continued product development to make the company's qualitative admissions outcomes data more usable and actionable within counselor workflows and real-world advising conversations, alongside disciplined investments in go-to-market, customer success, and select engineering and product roles as the company scales.

"Students are making life-shaping decisions with incomplete or misleading information," said Braden Weissman and Cooper Weissman, Co-Founders of Nerd Apply. "By aggregating real admissions outcomes from real students, we give counselors the clarity so they can guide students with confidence. This seed round allows us to scale responsibly while maintaining our standards for privacy, security, and trust."

College admissions have grown increasingly complex, with students navigating rankings, anecdotes, and headlines while counselors are expected to provide confident, evidence-based guidance with limited reliable data. Nerd Apply addresses this gap by aggregating completed, fully de-identified admissions outcomes shared by counselors for counselors, enabling more realistic guidance without exposing student identities.

"I'm proud to be an investor in Nerd Apply, a company that is fundamentally shifting college counseling from guesswork to data-driven certainty," said Gokul Rajaram. "By leveraging the world's largest dataset of successful applications, they are empowering advisors with the objective insights needed to help every student find their best-fit path."

As Nerd Apply grows, the company aims to become the trusted infrastructure for qualitative admissions outcomes data, helping counselors widen options, reduce uncertainty, and bring greater transparency to the college admissions process.

"Nerd Apply's organic traction reflects a stellar team that is deeply committed to bringing clarity to an increasingly difficult to navigate college admissions process," said Chris Moore. "The company sits at the intersection of data infrastructure, analytics, and trusted platforms – areas where their exceptional group of investors have spent decades operating. I'm excited to participate in one of the most influential rounds in education technology that is already delivering meaningful education outcomes at scale."

ABOUT NERD APPLY
Nerd Apply helps students find their best-match schools by giving counselors a privacy-first data platform. Trusted by 500+ counselors and powered by over 100,000 real applications, Nerd Apply makes it easy to organize student information, understand admissions patterns, and share insights without exposing identities. Instead of chasing the same 80 ultra-selective colleges, counselors use Nerd Apply to widen options, set clear expectations, and reduce anxiety for families.

Media Contact:
Paul Bilardo
[email protected]

Correction: Updates were made to the second paragraph, first sentence.

SOURCE Nerd Apply