New Ed Tech Partnerships Empower Millions of Families to Quickly Compare Costs of More Than 4,500 Colleges

WASHINGTON, June 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Millions of people looking to quickly compare the cost of their top colleges can now do so with ACT Profile and leading education resource site Noodle through new partnerships with College Abacus, a free online tool that allows students and families to calculate and compare their bottom-line tuition bills across U.S. colleges and universities. College Abacus has integrated its newly created app, or "widget," directly into the two organizations' websites, enabling students and their families to seamlessly explore all of their education options.

"ACT is committed to helping people achieve education and workplace success, and ACT Profile is just one resource available to students, counselors, and parents as students navigate the transition between high school and college," said John Corrigan, ACT vice president of customer experience. "College Abacus serves as a great financial planning complement to the free tools we already provide on ACT Profile to help students match interests, major, career, and school."

Hailed as one of CNNMoney's best new money ideas of 2014, College Abacus seeks to increase transparency in the college tuition market by allowing families to access the net price calculators of more than 4,500 U.S. schools in one place and compare their individualized options in an apples-to-apples format, rather than having to search on each school's individual website.

"Noodle's goal is to help parents and students quickly navigate the myriad of education options in front of them. And our parents heavily factor in the cost of college when determining where to send their students to school," said Sheryl Simonitis, vice president of Marketing for Noodle. "College Abacus' tool takes the guess work out of knowing just how much their child's education will be. This tool, added to Noodle's other college-search features, ensures parents find the best fit for their child."

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 required all U.S. colleges to publish net price calculators on their websites – tools that allow you to calculate the cost of higher education after grants and scholarships are subtracted from the total. By aggregating thousands of net price calculators, College Abacus serves as a 'Kayak.com' for college costs, eliminating the need to click through multiple websites and continuously re-enter information.

"A college education is one of the biggest investments a person can make in his or her lifetime and, in this era of rising tuition costs and growing student loan debt, families deserve access to the best possible tools and information for understanding their options," said Abigail Seldin, co-founder of College Abacus and vice president of Innovation and Product Management at ECMC Group. "These exciting new partnerships with ACT and Noodle will substantially broaden the reach of College Abacus, giving us a wider platform for helping more families identify colleges within their budgets."

College Abacus is operated out of the Washington, D.C.-based ECMC Innovation Lab, an incubator for new products and solutions designed to empower students to succeed in all types of higher education. For more information on the College Abacus widget, please visit: CollegeAbacus.org/widget.

About College Abacus

An ECMC initiative, College Abacus is a one-stop, secure search site that allows students to compare their projected cost of education across multiple schools to identify those within their budgets. Using net price calculators (NPCs) built by U.S. colleges as mandated by the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, College Abacus has developed a system that generates estimates for more than 4,500 postsecondary institutions in the United States. The projected cost of education posted on CollegeAbacus.org mirrors the estimates users would generate on the websites of each individual school. The site provides real-time information and is free to everyone.

About ACT

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, ACT is trusted as the nation's leader in college and career readiness, providing high-quality achievement assessments grounded in more than 50 years of research and experience. ACT offers a uniquely integrated set of solutions that help people succeed from kindergarten through career, providing insights that unlock potential. ACT Profile is a first-of-its-kind college and career planning community, built on 30+ years of ACT research. Mobile, social, and free to the public, ACT Profile delivers powerful, personalized insights to inform individuals as they navigate through life's key decision points. To learn more about ACT, go to www.act.org.

About Noodle

Noodle is a leading education website that helps parents and students make more informed decisions at every stage, from preschool through grad school and lifelong learning. Using Noodle's comprehensive online resources, families can find schools, tutors, summer camps, study abroad programs, and online learning tools. In all of these categories, Noodle's interactive search tools allow users to find their best-fit choices — whether those are middle schools with high attendance and low bullying rates, or colleges with notable sports programs and engineering majors. Students and parents can also ask questions that will be answered by some of the leading minds in education today and read expert-authored articles across hundreds of education-related topics.  

SOURCE College Abacus

Related Links

http://www.CollegeAbacus.org