EDPlus Holdings Unveils +U, A College Information Marketplace That Matches Students To Their Best Fit College

PORTLAND, Ore., Sept. 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Post-secondary education in the U.S. enrolls more than 20 million students a year. With student loan debt continuing to rise and recent graduates discovering that a diploma does not guarantee work, EDPlus Holdings is redefining the college planning and financing industry with its latest offering, +U. The first individualized ranking platform of its kind, +U provides students with the personal insight and precision they need to make the most informed college and program choice to optimize their Return on Education™. +U is a proprietary online system that combines students' personalized information with unique insights derived from patent pending technology to accurately match them with a tailored list of higher education institutions based on their personalized FIT score, financial return and future goals. This innovative matching capability will improve students' likelihood of program completion, satisfaction rates, school loan payback, and job matching/compensation after graduation.

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"When a student is matched to the right college, the right funding, and graduates from the right program, that sets them up for financial success, and everybody wins – students, schools, and the workforce at large," says Glenn Goad, EDPlus Holdings CEO. He adds, "We often hear that graduates would have made a different college decision if they had access to the right kind of information at the right time. With +U, and our Every Student Matters business strategy, we are customizing that process for college students and making harder decisions much easier, throughout the student lifecycle."

+U provides students with a complete College Information Marketplace that offers:

• Breakthrough Student To School Matching: Via the +U Portal, EDPlus Holdings combines a proprietary mix of individual student preferences, personality, and household profile data indexed with an innovative combination of compensation, labor market, and school performance data. This information is fed into a sophisticated predictive modeling engine to deliver a personalized "FIT Profile," a ranking of schools and recommendations for each student.
• Innovative Student-to-Funding Matching: Either via the +U Portal or their other search engine sites, ScholarshipExperts and eStudentLoan, EDPlus Holdings is able to feed personalized "Student Match Index" information into national scholarship and loans marketplaces to connect each student with all available school funding sources that best fit their needs and profile.
• The Best Online Resources & Tools: The +U Portal and affiliate network is designed to drive continued student success after college through features including a rewards program that helps students pay back their student loans more rapidly through everyday purchases.
• The Best Student to Job/Employer Matching: By becoming +U Certified™, students can be matched to targeted jobs that specifically align with their profile, skills, training, and preferences.

In its broader "Every Student Matters" business strategy, which includes strategic capital partnerships with schools and loan servicing, EDPlus Holdings shares the risk with its school and student partners to help schools grow their businesses. This shared risk model makes EDPlus Holdings more keenly attuned to the issues of its partners and more deeply invested in the success of its students.

In addition to the benefits it provides students, +U also provides opportunity for schools to lower their recruiting costs, improve their enrollment, as well as the outcomes of their marketing efforts by finding and funding better fit student prospects who are more likely to enroll, persist, and repay their loans once they graduate. The student leads +U provides to school partners are "+U Certified," so schools can be confident they are getting pre-screened prospects that match their own "best fit" criteria.

"A key facet of our business strategy at EDPlus Holdings is the belief that each step in the student-school-lender life cycle will benefit from greater transparency, more personalized, accurate information, insight, and interaction," said Goad. "+U was built to give students these experiences as they execute their college search process, allowing them to derive a powerful advantage when they find the best match for them, their goals and their career after they graduate."

The +U student launch will take place in Fall 2013 and be fully supported with mobile and social capabilities, as well as an integrated marketing initiative.

ABOUT EDPlus Holdings
EDPlus Holdings provides the most personalized and accurate platform for matching students with schools, financing, rewards and jobs. Our network of targeted web properties delivers 4 million unique consumer interactions each year, while our related private student loan business includes over 100,000 loans originated and serviced, reflecting $275 million in our current portfolio. EDPlus Holdings uses its unique insights and proprietary technologies to provide complete and transparent information that helps students choose the right school for their needs and future goals. From picking a school, to funding your education, to maintaining financial discipline while you build your career, EDPlus Holdings is a trusted and reliable partner. EDPlus Holdings is a subsidiary of Aequitas Management ("Aequitas"). With over $500 million in assets under management, Aequitas is a credit-focused investment management firm that builds and distributes income-producing alternative investment solutions to institutional and high net worth clients. With a lending and fund management platform, Aequitas focuses on high yielding strategies within education, healthcare and private credit. Aequitas is headquartered in Portland, OR with over 100 employees and offices in San Diego, Jacksonville, FL,  and New York.

SOURCE EDPlus Holdings