Applica: Changing how college applications work

MANILA, Philippines — It was a hot and humid summer day. Anna had just finished her morning classes at San Juan National High School and rushed to the registrar’s office of her desired university to submit her application forms. She tried to look for jeepneys, to no avail. Frustrated, she had to spend the rest of her P100 to ride a taxi from San Juan to the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. When she reached the registrar’s office, she was met with long lines of prospective students seeking to file their papers.

She got rejected. 

Anna wasn’t able to apply elsewhere. There were numerous scholarship opportunities for good students like her, but the lack of information rendered her unaware, which led her to believe that winning a scholarship was simply impossible.

When young entrepreneurs King Alandy Dy and Jefferson Tan heard Anna’s story and the plight of hundreds of Filipino students, they knew things had to change. 

Two months later, coupled with sleepless nights, Alandy Dy and Tan, freshmen from Stanford University and Ateneo de Manila University, respectively, along with a group of high school students, have created Applica, an online platform that aims to centralize the college application process. 

The two entrepreneurs submitted their idea to Harvard Social Innovation Collaborative’s Village to Raise a Child program and won, thereby providing them the opportunity to present their vision not only to esteemed members of the Harvard University faculty but also to the United Nations Global Compact and other prestigious institutions. 

And this led to the birth of Applica — a cloud database system that seamlessly connects universities with students. 

Virtual bridge 

Applica was created with the vision of creating positive social change in mind. It is a virtual bridge that eradicates monetary and time constraints, drastically reducing the burden of the Filipino student in the process. 

After all, prospective university students often have to go to their desired institutions several times during the admissions cycle — spending ludicrous, unnecessary amounts of money, time and effort. 

Moreover, universities employ traditional methods of reading and filing application forms; this limits the ability of admissions officers to analyze applications with in-depth detail, to the detriment of the applicants. 

Applica enables students to apply to various universities online. At the same time, it provides universities and institutions of higher education access to powerful, beautifully-designed analytics that equips them with unparalleled efficiency.

The crux of Applica’s mission revolves on creating social impact, as such, the entrepreneurs have decided to incorporate scholarships and exclusive opportunities to Filipino students who apply through the system. 

Applica exemplifies the ability of the youth to create tangible changes to society. It epitomizes that barriers can be destroyed and that innovation arises from revolutionary ideas. 

As the CEO of Applica, Alandy Dy, states: “Disrupt the world, whether it be within your community or in a whole industry,” Applica is an example not only of the youth’s capabilities in making change but also how we, Filipinos, should not settle for anything less than perfection. – Rappler.com

Applica is set to launch on June 22, 2015. At the moment their website is located at applica.me , but they will be transfering this to It can be accessed by visiting: www.ap after the launch.

Jan Wynton Sy is a student at The British School Manila. Heavily involved in Model United Nations (MUN), he organized and served as the Secretary General of the largest MUN conference in the Philippines in both senior school and middle school divisions. He is also the Founder and President of TEDxBritishSchoolManila and works at Applica as its Head of Public Relations.