Anyone who has ever applied to a university or college in North America knows it can be intimidating and confusing. We often ask questions like:

    • Which school offers which program?

    • What are the entrance criteria?

    • What are the program costs?



The questions go on and on. Luckily for high school graduates from North America, information and resources on universities and colleges are readily accessible, which helps in narrowing down the search for the right school.

But what about international students, for whom resources might not be available and language might be a barrier? Wouldn’t it help to offer a platform that streamlines the search and application process, thereby removing obstacles for international students to study abroad?

Applyboard was created in 2015 with that goal in mind.

Founded by Meti and Martin Basiri, ApplyBoard is revolutionizing the way international students apply to post-secondary schools in North America. Students from anywhere in the world can easily find and apply to the best programs based on their academic background, desired course of study and financial situation.

The ApplyBoard platform, with its unique matching algorithm, benefits students, recruitment agencies and high schools by finding the best programs to which students are most likely to be accepted, based on the student’s financial means, educational background and program area of interest. Its accuracy rate in successfully matching students to programs is 95 per cent.

Open Data plays a key role in ApplyBoard’s platform both in terms of acceptance statistics for universities and for marketing.

“Data from universities and colleges help with our algorithms in ensuring the best match for students. As well, we also use Statistics Canada information on student visa applications by country which allows us to target our efforts overseas,” says Meti Basiri, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of ApplyBoard.


Since 2015, ApplyBoard has grown to more than 30 employees. In working with recruitment agencies and schools, it has matched more than 50,000 students in 80-plus countries to their schools of choice. Student by student, ApplyBoard is helping thousands of people around the world realize their dreams and attend the best schools while building a better future for the world.

For more information on ApplyBoard please contact Meti Basiri.


Michael has held several senior management positions in the high tech industry over the past 15 years including Director of Enterprise Pricing, Market Research and New Product Introduction at BlackBerry Ltd., as well as VP of Business Development at Instrumar Ltd., a startup based out of St. John’s Newfoundland. Michael holds a BASc (Honours) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University.