LinkedIn introduces new tools for students: Decision Boards, University Outcome Rankings and University Finder

LinkedIn today announced the introduction of three new tools for students: Decision Boards, University Outcome Rankings and University Finder. The company’s goal is to help them decide everything from where to attend college all the way to figuring out how to launch their careers after graduation.

Decision Boards is a decision-making tool meant to help students “share their evolving thought process with and request input from trusted advisors.” They can also meet future classmates for inspiration and commiseration before even stepping on campus.

Decision Boards is a combination of organizing, socializing and gathering insight. Yet it’s rather useless unless you already know which schools you’re considering.

University Outcome Rankings aims to help by showing which schools are best at launching graduates into desirable jobs. LinkedIn analyzes millions of alumni profiles to find out how schools around the world stack up across various careers.

LinkedIn claims “these are the first rankings using alumni career outcomes to rank schools for specific careers.” Furthermore, it plans to add more categories and countries, so this is just the beginning.

University Finder is supposed to make searching for schools a more personalized experience using interactive graphs based on the future career each student imagines for himself or herself. LinkedIn offers an example: a student can specify they would “like to study engineering, then work at Google or Apple and live in the SF Bay Area” and see relevant school results.

LinkedIn is essentially trying to help with solving the challenge of youth unemployment, college graduation rates, student loan debt, and so on. Oh, and if it can get students hooked on its platform early, well then all the better.

See also – LinkedIn lists 2013’s most in demand employers: Google, Apple keep first and second but Microsoft, Facebook slip and LinkedIn partners with 7 online education firms to let users add certifications and courses to their profiles

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