Unive team recently fundraised nearly half a million USD to scale solution
Unive’s AI-powered university and career counselling platform, launched in August 2025, is designed to offer application support to students who lack access to personalised guidance. By leveraging advancements in AI, Unive seeks to make the university admissions process more accessible and affordable for applicants from all backgrounds.
October 7th, 2025. In the United States, there is on average just one guidance counsellor for every 385 students, while private college counselling services can range from hundreds of dollars per hour to as much as $750,000. In many Asian countries, schools have no guidance counsellors at all, leaving students to navigate complex university application processes with minimal expert support. Moreover, young people often receive little advice on suitable career pathways, contributing to 50% of university graduates working in roles unrelated to their undergraduate major.
The edtech start-up Unive aims to address this “guidance gap” through its AI-powered university and career counselling platform, launched in August 2025. Unive’s digital advisers, supported by human experts, guide students through each step of the application journey – from selecting institutions and crafting essays to preparing for interviews and identifying scholarships. By harnessing the potential of AI technology, Unive is well placed to help students from diverse backgrounds develop stronger applications in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
Personalized admissions support at scale
Unive’s platform is built to help students step by step, guiding them through important academic, extracurricular, and personal decisions. Its digital advisors track each student’s interests, achievements, and career plans, allowing for feedback and recommendations that adjust over time. Students can get help drafting personal statements, resumes, cover letters, mapping application deadlines, and identifying universities or programs that align with their goals.
“Our AI counselors go beyond what traditional advising can offer by drawing from millions of data points about universities, scholarships, and successful applications,” says Jonas Kavaliauskas, Co-Founder and CEO of Unive. “Each student receives detailed advice drawn from current trends, employment data, and evolving admissions standards, in their own language, tailored to their individual strengths and ambitions.” The system’s reach means students no longer need to depend on their school’s resources or pay premium rates for expert guidance.
Amid growing AI use in education, Kavaliauskas emphasizes that Unive is fully compliant with university policies and broader guidelines on ethical technology use. “We see our platform as a supplement to students’ own work, giving responsible and transparent support rather than replacing individual effort.”
A process shaped by experience
Unive was born out of firsthand experience with the college admissions journey. “I went through the U.S. application process myself and spent hundreds of hours learning how each part worked, making mistakes along the way but eventually earning a spot at my first-choice, Yale,” says Kavaliauskas. That experience led Kavaliauskas to start advising friends and other students, first through a nonprofit and later via his own consulting practice. Over eight years, he and his teams worked with hundreds of applicants headed to universities in the U.S., U.K., and beyond.
The idea to automate access to admissions guidance took shape when Kavaliauskas met his co-founder, Tomas Maksimovic, a data scientist, while working together in venture capital investing. “Tomas saw that AI could outperform even the best human counselors if properly trained,” says Kavaliauskas. “After testing the concept quickly and seeing positive results, together with our other co-founders, we left our jobs, raised VC capital and devoted ourselves to making this a reality.”
While the platform is currently focused on the U.S., looking ahead, Unive plans to expand to cover Western Europe and deepen its partnerships with universities. The platform’s AI system is well-positioned to support recruitment efforts by helping schools reach students who are the right fit for their programs. “As our algorithms learn, we’ll be able to match students and universities more effectively and even help admissions teams evaluate thousands of applications at scale,” says Kavaliauskas. “Our aim is to become an essential tool on both sides of the admissions process, paving the way for greater access and opportunity matching.”