MyCollegePrice Launches Middle Class Affordability Rankings(TM) for Colleges

IOWA CITY, Iowa, Jan. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- MyCollegePrice™ announced today the launch of the market's first Middle Class Affordability Rankings™  that give prospective college students and their parents a novel way to compare the costs of college. The new service, free to consumers, evaluates almost two thousand colleges by state and by major for a typical middle class family. The Rankings create a new universal benchmarking system for college costs based on net price, which is the actual price after institutional scholarships and financial aid.

"With soaring college costs, one of the principal challenges for families is identifying the right schools that match their financial circumstances.  There are few sources that clearly lay out how schools compare one to another based on true costs, instead of on published list prices of tuition, room and board," said William Staib, President of MyCollegePrice.

"Fortunately, our new update of MyCollegePrice solves that, making comparison shopping easy. MyCollegePrice is designed to bring transparency to the college search process and our new Rankings make college shopping easier than ever before."

Using a 'Typical' Middle Class Family

Using sophisticated data aggregation methods and its proprietary platform, MyCollegePrice has simplified college comparisons into straightforward Rankings. It uses a baseline middle class family of four, with $80,000 of annual income, $70,000 in total assets and one family member in college. Starting with this profile, MyCollegePrice's models use data from thousands of private users and public sources to estimate the true cost of attendance at almost 2,000 colleges across the United States. Colleges are then ranked within each state as well as nationwide within each major.

Staib continued, "Our Rankings bring a different perspective to the whole process of college search. Given the variability in college financial aid programs and the impact of a family's financial circumstances on net price, the lowest cost college for many families may be the one with the highest sticker price. Through our Rankings, users can quickly discover new college options. Then, using MyCollegePrice's universal net price calculator, they can refine their search and obtain custom cost estimates based on their individual financial circumstances."

Positive Early Feedback from the Industry

MyCollegePrice launched its Rankings in beta in November 2012 and early feedback from the college access and educational assistance industry has been positive.  Rob Miller, Executive Director of the Iowa College Access Network stated, "As we advise parents and students on how to find appropriate college options, cost is a major concern.  With its Rankings and other tools, MyCollegePrice's focus on bringing transparency to the 'real' cost of college is a noble effort to help students obtain a college education without being overburdened with debt."

Expanding Choice and Helping Students Find Affordable College Alternatives

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 Middle Class Affordability Rankings™ is just one of the tools we are developing to bring transparency to the college search process," 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.  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 at mycollegeprice.com.

Contact:
Ric Camacho
Chief Strategy Officer/VP of Business Development
Tel: +1 415.462.2850
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE MyCollegePrice