Going to college can be expensive, but it’s also often confusing. Families are often made to spend hours and hours trying to compare colleges, with little help or guidance. The college search — one of the most important decisions in a student’s life — has been made nearly impossible. The “sticker price” listed on a school’s website often scares away great students before they even apply — some of whom may have discovered that even elite schools were affordable or even free for them. It just isn’t right. We have to fix it.
So, in 2012, we launched a service called MyCollegePrice. The idea was simple. We wanted families and students to be able to quickly and easily compare the net price that they would pay for at each college. Such a simple idea turned out to be much more complex than we ever imagined. It turned out that no one — including colleges, the government or any other companies — were providing a good way for students to really discover colleges that offered them the best financial aid.
From our original mission of helping students and families to understand and compare college costs, we now see that there are even bigger challenges when choosing a college. The entire system is full of complex and confusing processes that make it difficult for students, parents and even counselors to understand the best options available.
With that in mind, we have taken the technology and data that we used to create MyCollegePrice and made it better and more comprehensive. We’ve created College Raptor — an entirely new college search and planning tool.
College Raptor is a free tool for prospective college students and their families to help answer the often confusing question of which college will be the best fit. Instead of focusing just on price, College Raptor takes into consideration interests, ability and financial circumstances. It’s truly the only all-in-one search and matching platform for college.
What makes College Raptor Special?
In addition to our unique college search platform, we have created a number of other tools to make College Raptor the ultimate tool for college search and planning.
We help optimize the student’s college application list by providing estimated admissions chances and guiding students to build a portfolio of match, safety and reach colleges. Our What-If scenarios provide students with a way to see how changes in test scores, grades or financial situation will impact their costs and admissions odds at each college. We’re also building a step-by-step application manager that helps students navigate the entire process.
All of this functionality makes going to college easier and more affordable — helping students and families make the best decisions for them.
Unique features
Some of College Raptor’s unique features include:
- Secure, easy to use, interface for inputting student data
- Comprehensive student profiles
- Net price estimates allow students to compare costs of college and financial aid packages
- Admissions chances estimates for every school in the U.S.
- College application portfolio and management
- Detailed college information, including campus details, academic and admissions information, financial data and majors information
- What-If analysis allows students to see how changes in test scores, grades and financial circumstances will impact admissions chances and financial aid
The future of College Raptor
We’re incredibly proud of the products that we’ve built, and we know that they’ll help families immensely. But, we’ve just started on our journey. Our hope with College Raptor is to change the way that students find and apply to colleges. We want to make the process simpler and make college educational more affordable for students.
Our vision for College Raptor is to expand our functionality even further to help students navigate the entire career and education decision process. We know that with more information and better technology, students and families can make better decisions and ultimately be happier throughout their careers.
Be on the look out for more new features and functionality from College Raptor as we continue to grow.
