Greg Dohler/The Gazette Susan Jones (left) and Elizabeth Van Sant, both of Chevy Chase, co-produced the Quad2Quad mobile app to help parents and students plan college visits.

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Greg Dohler/The Gazette The Quad2Quad mobile app produced by Chevy Chase residents Susan Jones and Elizabeth Van Sant offers a detailed planning guide to visiting premiere colleges and universities across the country.

Greg Dohler/The Gazette Susan Jones (left) and Elizabeth Van Sant, both of Chevy Chase, co-produced the Quad2Quad mobile app to help parents and students plan college visits.

 

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Two local moms hope to make college hunting a little easier with a new mobile phone application that helps families plan visits to prospective schools.

Chevy Chase residents Susan Jones, 68, and Elizabeth Van Sant, 54, created Quad2Quad, a company whose iPhone/iPad app of the same name provides information on interviews, tours, parking and other details related to 74 colleges in the U.S.

They hope to add 300 more colleges in the next two months, and have a social networking feature planned for the future.

The one-stop shop for planning college visits consolidates information from a variety of colleges, which they hope will make it easier for high school students to take control of planning college tours.

Van Sant, a freelance educational consultant for boarding schools and colleges, is chief operating officer of Quad2Quad. She toured more than 100 schools with her four children, a process she said was made more difficult due to information buried on school websites. She sometimes had to make multiple calls to gather information.

“One of the biggest challenges was trying to find some of the information on the website, such as tours and information sessions,” she said. “I went to Susan [Jones] when I was planning trips for my fourth [child], and said there has to be an easier way.”

After doing some research, they discovered there was nothing on the market that would help.

Quad2Quad took two years to develop from an idea to a soft release. A hard release is scheduled for mid-September. It already has been downloaded nearly 1,000 times, with a little help from their children, who have been promoting the app on their Facebook pages.

Jones, chief executive officer of the company, said it cost less than $100,000 to develop the application, significantly less than the original estimate of $200,000-$300,000. Jones is a former psychotherapist who has been working for the last six years as an educational consultant and career coach for Dunbar Educational Consultants.

“There were times we just wanted to pack it in, and I think the reason we didn’t is because we are passionate about this,” she said. “We both think this is software that people want and need and will benefit people’s lives.”

She visited approximately 30 schools with her two sons. Some colleges change their tour schedule every month and were not always upfront about whether they offer interviews, and how to get an interview, she said.

Although both woman are finished with the college search for their own children, they hope their application, which was put together by a software developer, will help engage students, who often rely on parents to plan their college tours.

“I really think it facilitates the college visit planning process,” Van Sant said. “Hopefully it’ll get the young people, the high school juniors and seniors, more engaged and become part of the process, as opposed to have their parents do it all for them.”

Quad2Quad is available from Apple’s App Store. The download is free with one Boston itinerary, which includes five colleges. Buyers can gain access to all 74 colleges with a one-time upgrade charge of $4.99, which includes all future updates. The upgrade will be discounted to 99 cents on Sept. 13-14.

jablamsky@gazette.net