Most college freshmen or transfer students, thrust into a new environment, have many questions regarding their campus and social norms, which can cause them to become overwhelmed and uncertain. Now, there is a centralized place where they can ask their questions and voice their uncertainties - www.AnswerU.com.
"What we have realized is that there exists a hierarchy of information on college campuses," said Anil Dharni, co-founded of AnswerU, in a recent phone interview with The Heights.
This hierarchy develops and transforms each year as seniors graduate and incoming freshman enter. Seniors possess the highest degree of knowledge, followed by juniors, then sophomores, then freshmen. The latter always ask questions pertaining to their new environment. It takes months of exploration and trial and error to develop the knowledge possessed by older students.
Anil Dharni and Brad Galle, the founders of AnswerU, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year and just received business degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.
They conceived the idea for AnswerU after noticing the "hierarchy of information."
"Brad moved from New Jersey to go to business school and I moved from California," said Dharni. "One of the first things that struck us after going back to campus was that a lot of people are like us. They come from different parts of the world and are placed in a new location - Cambridge, in Boston. We don't know anything about it. Undergraduates are beginning a new four year chapter and for graduate students it's two years and for postgraduate students it's five to six years. One is kind of shoved into this new environment and you have to figure out your academic life, your social life. You have to make new friends."
Students who are unfamiliar with the area surrounding their new schools always ask the same questions, albeit in different ways, said Dharni.
"Where's the closet ATM? Where should I open a bank account? Where are the cool parties? What fraternity should I join?"
Many methods exist by which one can answer these questions - for instance, universities' Web sites, organization listservs, etc. Nevertheless, the source of the answers is not centralized.
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