With more than 190,000 students from China attending US education facilities, a Silicon Valley startup is providing those who want to join that growing enrollment the opportunity to select the program that best meets their needs.

Meedow.com, founded in 2012, is a search engine that collects, analyzes and edits information on a variety of programs offered by universities and colleges. "Meedow.com is like a shopping mall on which students can shop for 'brand-name' education programs," said Zeng Yiyi, the site's founder.

"Meedow is dedicated to providing students in grades K-12 with educational resources from some of the best academic institutions the US has to offer," said Zeng. "We want to be a one-stop solution for those students by working with the best universities and education institutions and using innovative technology that Silicon Valley has."

Meedow's users - which include students in K-12 grades, parents, school officials and educators - can search not only for courses, but also training programs, summer camps, online classes and internships. More than 600 programs are on meedow.com, and the schools hosting them include Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Columbia universities, as well as Stanford High School Summer College, Harvard Summer Intensive English, Yale Summer Conservatory for Actors and NASA Space Settlement Contest.

Meedow also offers programs that are reasonably priced or free to qualified students. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's summer-research program covers tuition, food and accommodation. Accepted students pay only for transportation to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school.

Fang Yin, general manager for North America at MoWeather, a weather app that provides local weather and forecasts, is one of Meedow's early users. "I signed up on Meedow for my brother, a junior high school student in China who hopes to do his undergraduate degree in the US," she said.

Although Fang has been in the US for many years, she said she is not familiar with its higher education system. "Meedow's rich contents and user-friendly search service can be very effective and time-saving when I use it. I can go through 30 projects through Meedow, but only one project by myself in the same amount of time." she said.

Another advantage of Meedow, Fang said, is that it is available in Chinese. "I don't need translate anymore when I forward the information to my brother," she said.

Meedow's connection with the US educational institutes on its site comes from the efforts of Zeng and her team.

"I have spent nearly six months visiting numerous universities and colleges where I would talk to professors and admission officials," Zeng said. "I found that most of them were very excited about the prospect of Meedow. Since then, I have continued to communicate with and expand my network within those in higher education."

Although Meedow only recently launched its website in beta and its targeted audience is Chinese students, it already has hundreds of users and word about the site is spreading, said Zeng.

"We would love nothing more than to be able to provide educational resources to students all over the world," he said.

yuwei12@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 10/04/2013 page11)