The right nudge. The right person. The right time.
Journey learns what each Merage student is building toward, then texts them the one event, introduction, or resource that moves them forward. Personalized matching. Timely nudges. No new app to open.
Illustrative readout. Modeled on Journey’s measured engagement rates applied to a Merage-size graduate cohort. Real figures are set with your team during the pilot.
Trusted by universities
The hidden curriculum
The MBA is on the syllabus. The network isn’t.
Merage runs the events, the clubs, the Career Center, and a network of nearly nineteen thousand alumni. The hard part was never the supply. It’s that the right student rarely hears about the right thing at the moment it would have mattered.
Events students never hear about
The mixer, the info session, the alum in town for one night. It lands in an inbox no one opens, next to forty other emails.
Alumni who would help, if asked well
The Merage network is enormous and generous. Most students never make the ask, because they don’t know who to ask or how to start.
A quarter moves fast
By the time a student realizes they should have started recruiting, the window has half closed. Timing is the whole game, and no one has time to manage it by hand.
How the matching works
It learns the student, then closes the gap for them.
Not a directory to search. A quiet layer that knows what each student wants and puts the next right move one tap away.
Understand the goal
In a 90-second text onboarding, each student tells Journey their track, the roles they’re chasing, and where they feel stuck. It maps them to what Merage already offers, from the MCA to the Career Center to the alumni network.
Find the one right thing
Journey watches the calendar of events, employer sessions, club nights, and alumni in the network. It surfaces the single opportunity that fits this student this week, not a feed of everything.
Reach them in the window
A short text at the moment they can act. One tap to RSVP, book the Career Center, or send a warm intro. Capped at three nudges a week, so attention is respected, not spent.
Try it yourself
One question. The right match, every time.
This is the text a Merage student gets in week three. Pick like they would. Watch Journey route them to the exact opportunity.
In their own thread
Four ways it shows up.
Every one of these is a text, not a portal. Tap through what a Merage student actually sees.
Beyond graduation
The relationship doesn’t end at commencement.
Merage wants more than students who succeed while they’re here. It wants graduates who thrive, come back, mentor the next class, and make the network stronger. Journey is the thread that stays with them across the whole arc.
Student
Matched to the right events, people, and Career Center support from week one.
Graduate
Lands the role. The relationship simply keeps going instead of going dark.
Engaged alum
A nudge before the reunion, the regional mixer, the alumni event they’d have missed.
Mentor
Matched to a current student in their field. One ask, one thread, real impact.
Advocate
Refers talent, opens doors, gives back. The brand compounds with every cycle.
What a networking layer moves
Connection you can count, not just a calendar.
The metrics a graduate program actually reports on. Illustrative targets, set with your team, tracked against a real cohort.
78%
Weekly engagement
A student acted on a networking nudge in a typical week. Program email lands near 7%.
1,840
Introductions made
Warm intros to alumni, employers, and classmates. Confirmed, not just suggested.
92%
Event seats filled
The right students in the room, matched to what fits their track.
+31%
Alumni still engaged
More graduates who stay in the network a year out, versus the prior cohort.
The engine is already proven.
Networking is a new surface on a platform universities already renew. Here is what the same engine did for engagement and retention at the University of New Haven.
The same matching-and-nudge engine, applied to student life.
“Universities are clumsy with how they communicate. Journey is the first thing I’ve seen that students actually answer.”
Jens Frederiksen · President · University of New Haven
For the graduate programs office
The questions Merage will ask.
How does it know what to match a student to? +
Two inputs. First, a 90-second text onboarding where the student names their track, target roles, and where they feel stuck. Second, a live feed of what Merage already runs: club events, employer sessions, Career Center availability, and the alumni network.
Journey matches the student to the single best next move each week, rather than dumping a calendar on them. The matching improves as students respond, so week ten is sharper than week one.
How does it connect to alumni without creating spam? +
Alumni opt in and set their own availability, exactly as they already do in the Merage mentoring programs. Journey never blasts the network. It surfaces a specific, relevant alum to a specific student and drafts a warm, personalized intro the student sends themselves.
The alum stays in control of how often and for what. The result is more high-quality asks and fewer cold, generic ones, which is what keeps a network generous over time.
Does this replace our Career Center or the clubs? +
No, it feeds them. Journey is the connective layer that gets the right student to the Career Center session, the MCA case night, or the executive mentor they would otherwise have missed. Every path in the demo routes to a real Merage resource.
Your team keeps doing what only people can do. Journey handles the discovery and the timing at a scale no staff calendar can.
How much staff time and setup does it take? +
A pilot cohort takes roughly 8 hours of staff time to stand up, most of it documenting the resources you already publish so Journey can route to them. Students get texts, so there is nothing to install and no new login. Deployment runs about four weeks from first call.
Ongoing, the load is light. Your team reviews a short signal queue and makes the warm handoffs that need a human.
How is student data and FERPA handled? +
Journey is FERPA-ready and processes student data only under a written agreement with UCI, for the educational purpose you authorize, operating as a school official with a legitimate educational interest. SOC 2 certification is in progress.
Staff see what a student needs, not private message transcripts. We will walk your counsel and IT team through the data-processing agreement and controls before anything is signed.
Can we measure it, including the after-graduation part? +
Yes. Journey reports on engagement, introductions made, events filled, Career Center bookings, and club sign-ups by cohort. For the alumni arc, it tracks mentor matches, alumni event attendance, and continued engagement a year out, the leading indicators of a network that compounds.
We set the specific targets with your team at the start of the pilot, so you are reporting on numbers you chose, not ones we picked.
Turn Merage into one connected network.
A short walkthrough, a live look at the matching engine, and a straight answer on setup, data, and the alumni lifecycle. We reply within one business day.