Recent MassChallenge winner Abroad101 has taken the $50k award and successfully turned it into a $500k investment round. New investors include Steve Kaufer and Nick Shanny — both co-founders of TripAdvisor — and Mark Shay founder of StudyAbroad.com. Both sets of investors bring Abroad101 a stacked network.

Abroad101‘s mission is to promote intercultural understanding and global citizenship by fostering a safer, better-researched, and meaningful study abroad experience for students. By providing software as a service tools to institutions of higher education, they will be able to collect student evaluations, analyze and create reports on the different study abroad programs. Students can visit Abroad101’s website and receive the most comprehensive, up to date reviews of these study abroad programs. “Helping students find the best academic experience is what we’re all about,” said co-founder Adam Miller.

“In 1995 StudyAbroad.com helped propel international education into the mainstream,” said current investor Mark Shay. “Today, I see that same potential in Abroad101, using the power of program evaluations to help students find the best fit and to help program administrators improve the quality of their offerings.”

Abroad101 has over 5,000 user reviews, partners with more than 100 universities across the U.S., and is already generating revenues.

The study abroad process can be very confusing and deters a lot of students (like myself) from applying. Having a one stop destination site of comprehensive student reviews will hopefully eliminate most of those concerns.

“The new money raised will be used to scale up the number of universities who support our software and further build out the revenue stream,” said cofounder Adam Miller on a phone call with BostInno. “Continuing to expand internationally will be a large focus moving forward,” added Miller.

To learn more about Abroad101, check out their blog and follow them on Facebook.