Personal Launches ‘Personal for Education’ at White House Event

Personal, a web and mobile application for individuals to store, share and reuse their most valuable information, launched “Personal for Education,” to help students, parents, teachers and administrators save time, improve accuracy, and advance opportunities for students. 

• Fast Form Filling for Scholarships and Financial Aid: Families spend more than 30 million hours filling out FAFSA forms each year. In seconds, Personal can help students and parents organize, store and reuse the information they need to fill out scholarship applications and future FAFSA forms in a fraction of the time. This will be available soon when the U.S. Department of Education releases individual federal education data to students.

• Secure Sharing for Schools: Personal is helping parents, teachers and administrators in pre-schools easily create and securely share everything from electronic student directories to school events and resources. Personal enables families to access and update their information in real time on the web and their smartphones, ensuring they always have the most accurate information at home and on the go.

At the White House, in front of education, business and policy leaders, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Personal co-founder and CEO, Shane Green, debuted videos documenting the story of Alfredo Loris, a student burdened by FAFSA forms, and demonstrating the simplicity and power of automatic form filling and reusing data for FAFSA and scholarship applications. Green presented during “Education Datapalooza,” a program organized by the White House and U.S. Department of Education to showcase innovation around technology and the release of federal education data as part of the government’s Open Data Initiative.

Alfredo closed the presentation by explaining that Personal would make a big difference for students like him in the future, saying, “If I had the chance to reuse my information over and over again, I would have filled out so many scholarship applications. Instead of spending time on FAFSA, I could be doing so many things. Time is so precious for me now because of work, school and my internship, so it would really help me.”