Kaaledge

I discovered Kaaledge through an e-mail alert from Rahul Thathoo, one of its founders. First I thought Kaaledge is a play on college, but apparently, it's kaalEDGE (whatever *that* means). Here's the blurb from its About page:

... Currently we offer a blog and a forum for you to take benefit of, read and ask questions that you may have regarding your dream of applying to universities in the US and/or Europe.

We are a bunch of highly motivated graduate students in the US who have been through the process and are willing to help you out where ever we can. We hope you benefit from interacting with us. And oh by the way, keep a look out on the new products and services we come out with in the very near future!

The site has all kinds of stuff targeted at (mainly, Indian) students looking to do grad school in the US. So, the potential audience is pretty big!

Now, I have seen quite a few specialized websites and blogs devoted to JEE and CAT, but almost all of them have been bad: their poorly designed pages have meager and useless info mixed in with tons of sad-looking ads. Kaaledge is refreshingly different: it appears to have been put together by people who are genuinely enthusiastic about the project, and I haven't seen any ads (so far). If at all the Kaaledge folks are promoting something, it seems to be their own stuff ("... look out on the new products and services we come out with in the very near future!"); for example, its GRE prep help -- via SMS (no, I haven't tried it!).

The site has a mix of department profiles, interviews of people who have been through US grad schools, sample statements of purpose, and higher-ed related news. I don't know how useful this sort of stuff is for potential grad students, but that's what you get there. Also, I found it a little too CS/EE centric, but that may be because of the background of its current set of people.

An interesting project, and I'll be keeping an eye on it.