FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MyCollegePrice Launches New Comparison Shopping Site for College Costs
MyCollegePrice.com answers the question of how much college will really cost by enabling students and their parents to quickly estimate their net price instead of sticker price at thousands of colleges
IOWA CITY, Iowa (October 31, 2012) — MyCollegePrice announced today the launch of the first universal net price calculator, MyCollegePrice.com, that allows prospective college students and their parents to estimate their true cost of attendance at nearly all U.S. four-year colleges and universities. The new service, free to consumers, evaluates almost two thousand colleges in seconds for both academic fit and estimated net price.
“With soaring college costs, the challenge of finding an affordable college education is reaching almost crisis proportions,” said William Staib, President of MyCollegePrice. “Fortunately, there are many good deals out there. Our goal with MyCollegePrice is to create a comparison shopping tool that brings transparency to the college search process. We want to help students find colleges that fit both them and their budget.”
College is often more affordable than families expect
Staib continued, “Other college search sites use the sticker price, which can be $60,000 per year or more for many schools. This causes families to exclude colleges they really should be considering. Today, even families with middle to upper-middle level incomes often qualify for significant financial aid. The lowest cost college may be the one with the highest sticker price. Our users often discover new college options that are better deals than their previous choices.”
Improving transparency of college costs
President Barack Obama, in his 2012 State of the Union address, highlighted the need for better transparency about college costs. In 2011, U.S. colleges were required to provide online “net price calculators” for students and families to estimate their cost of attendance after any financial aid. In July 2012, the U.S. Department of Education unveiled a standardized financial aid award letter. Even with this progress, until today, there was no tool for students to quickly compare net prices before applying to colleges.
Positive feedback from early users
MyCollegePrice was launched as a public beta in July 2012. Since then the site has been used by many students, parents and guidance counselors, whose feedback was invaluable in enhancing the service for today’s public launch.
“MyCollegePrice is very, very cool,” said Vicky Kalumbi, a student at Stanford University. “The interface is nice, especially when typing in majors and information for academic fit. The estimates were accurate and the academic fit worked well. I actually applied to six of the schools listed on the first page of results.”
Alyse Slaughter, a high school senior in Iowa City, Iowa, commented, “I like MyCollegePrice because none of the other college search sites consider cost as much. Having a combination of cost and fit makes MyCollegePrice a great tool.”
Helping students find affordable college options
MyCollegePrice combines data provided by colleges to the U.S. government with census and tax statistics and user feedback to estimate students’ costs. In addition to estimating net price of attendance, MyCollegePrice also uses student academic and demographic data to assign each school an “academic fit” score, based on the student’s GPA and test scores relative to other students, and the student’s desired majors.
“Our goal with MyCollegePrice is to help students see that there are many schools out there — they have a lot of options,” said Staib. “We want students to find the perfect school for them, at a price they can afford.”
About MyCollegePrice
As a technology innovator in the education technology and services market, MyCollegePrice offers critical analytical and forecasting tools to consumers, financial and academic advisors as well as colleges and universities. As our first consumer-facing product, MyCollegePrice uniquely enables parents and students to conduct customized cost and academic fit assessments as they make their college application decisions. Using MyCollegePrice, consumers can often achieve huge cost and time-savings while making better, more informed decisions about college. MyCollegePrice is a division of STB Enterprises LLC. Visit us on Facebook at facebook.com/MyCollegePrice and Twitter at twitter.com/MyCollegePrice.
CONTACT
Ric Camacho
Chief Strategy Officer/VP of Business Development
Tel: +1 415.462.2850
Email: [email protected]
