College Prowler

CollegeProwler.com

Type	Private
Industry	Publishing, College Guidance
Founded	2002
Headquarters	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Key people	Luke Skurman, Founder and CEO
Employees	< 20
Website	collegeprowler.com

A guidebook by College Prowler

College Prowler is an American publishing company for guidebooks on top colleges and universities in the United States.

The company creates guidebooks written by current college students, for prospective college students, giving an insider's view. Student writers use surveys to gather hundreds of student opinions and reviews, then offer "grades" on all aspects of campus life at each school. College Prowler publishes these "reality guides" on nearly 300 different colleges.^[1]

In addition to its school-specific books, the company also publishes a national compendium called "The Big Book of Colleges," three regional compendiums (California, New England, and the South) that combine multiple schools in one guide, and a guidebook focused on the Ivy League ("Untangling the Ivy League"). In March 2007, the company digitized all of its guidebooks, including over 40,000 pages of content, which are now available both in print and online.^[2]

The company was established in 2002 by Carnegie Mellon University graduates. It began as a project in an entrepreneurship class at CMU's Tepper School of Business and quickly expanded by co-founders Luke Skurman, Joey Rahimi, Christina Koshzow, Christopher Mason, Jason Putorti and Omid Gohari.^[3] In 2005, College Prowler was recognized by Fast Company (magazine) for being one of the 50 fastest-growing companies in the nation,^[4] and in 2006, partnered with AOL.^[5]

Facebook Controversy

In a 2008 scandal which came to be known as "Facebookgate"^[6], hundreds of spurious "Class of 2013" groups were created on Facebook for the purpose of promoting College Prowler. Such groups would normally be created by actual students or colleges themselves for purposes of social networking. According to the CEO, "The original purpose was to use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a free guide about their new college on our site." He also added, "No employee or anyone else associated with College Prowler has used these groups to send out messages or wall posts."^[7] College Prowler later removed all administrative access from the 125 groups, admitting "It was clearly over the line".

Notes

1. ^ Standing Out on Campus - Publishers Weekly
2. ^ Changing business plan to tech focus pays off - Pittsburgh Business Times
3. ^ The Electronic Lowdown on Colleges - The New York Times
4. ^ http://www.fastcompany.com/fast50_05/winners/
5. ^ Pop City - College Prowler partners with AOL, launches blog and video site
6. ^ Facebookgate, the 2010 editionThe Washington Post
7. ^ Company Created Official-Looking 'Class of 2013' Facebook Groups for Hundreds of Colleges - Chronicle of Higher Education

External links

• College Prowler website
• College Prowler Blog