Samuel Tate, a USC alum, has taken his experience at Marshall School of Business to give students opportunities to envision themselves at their colleges, taking inspiration from his own choice to go to USC. 

Tate emphasized that the reason he chose USC was heavily tied to information from his sister’s friend who went to USC. 

“They gave me the inside scoop on what professors to take, what fraternities to consider, which ones not to consider, where I should be living my freshman year and where it is safe to go,” Tate said. “It was just a really valuable experience. And I wish I could have done that at all the schools that I had applied to, but I did not have that personal connection there. I felt like I could really belong [at USC].”

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He partnered with David Craig, a colleague from work, to launch a private college tour business: SchoolScoops. 

SchoolScoops promises to provide a customized tour to customers with unfiltered information. Tate emphasizes that the tour is not meant to take away from university-provided campus tours, but to complement them with personalized takeaways. 

“[Campus tours] can only be so personalized,” Tate said. “We think a one-on-one experience where you get to pick who your guide is, someone who is in the major that you want to be in, who comes from a similar background as you, who might be your friend when you are in school, is a much more valuable experience.”

Tate drew from his personal experience touring over 50 colleges in high school for the inspiration behind SchoolScoops. He realized that tours from the admissions office followed a cookie-cutter format and offered a general overview. 

SchoolScoops has a similar matchmaking premise as that of Tate’s first business in his senior year at USC. He took a business class where the main goal was to launch a startup. 

“This was my first [experience] being an entrepreneur, and it was a company called Roost,” Tate said. “We matched travelers who were going to the same place at the same time to split the cost of lodging. There were profiles, so you could match up with like-minded travelers. We had some good success with music festivals and event-based travel.”

Tate started off by creating the simplest version for SchoolScoops a few years ago to gauge interest in the service. He built a website where a couple hundred college students from Stanford, Yale and Princeton signed up to be guides. The bookings for this version of the product generated around $2000 in profit. 

Around six months ago, while working at the same real estate development firm, Tate reached out to Craig.

“We both grew up in the Boston area, so [I have] known him for about three years now,” Craig said. “I know he was working on SchoolScoops for a little while, and when he was launching it, he asked me to come on board and help him launch it. Sam handles all things related to the product and we split everything else.”

SchoolScoops charges $75 for a private, one-hour tour where the locations and information are tailored to each customer based on their interests in majors, activities and lifestyle. 

Tour guides create profiles on the SchoolScoops website by answering questions about themselves and uploading a couple photos. These profiles are then viewed by customers to determine which tour guide would give them the most relevant information based on what they are interested in. 

Cooper Pate, a senior majoring in business administration, is a current SchoolScoops guide for USC.

“I really think it depends on the kid and what they are interested in,” Pate said. “Personally, I am in Greek life. So, if the kid was interested in Greek life, maybe showing them [the Row, which] kind of extends outside the typical tour. Immersing them in the student body based on student interest is really important.”

The current business plan for SchoolScoops is to focus on recruiting and hiring as many tour guides as they can for a variety of lifestyles. During peak touring season for prospective students, the company will switch over to a focus on marketing their product for consumers.

Craig and Tate said they plan to expand SchoolScoops into a business beyond college. 

“We want to build a really significant company,” Tate said. “There is a lot more work to be done on helping people find where they belong, and whether that is work, college — there are a lot of opportunities where it is really helpful to talk to someone that is like you, and you can find a community. We definitely want to build something really significant in the world and build it as big as we can.”