13 January 2016

College Kickstart for Students and Parents - What's New for 2016

Posted in College Kickstart, Product Announcements

In celebration of the new year, we've introduced several important refinements and a "premium" edition of College Kickstart for students and parents. These refinements should make College Kickstart even easier to use, help ensure that schools of interest are likely to meet affordability constraints, and help you locate safety schools with generous merit packages.

Click on Continue Reading below for more.

A better picklist

All editions of College Kickstart now include a new and improved way to add schools to your list. We now provide a full search capability, including support for school nicknames and special tags we've created (see below). Simply begin typing the name of the school you're interested in, and your choices will appear in a dropdown menu. To add the school to your list, click on the check box to the left of the school. To change the rank order of the school after you've added it, just grab the school and drag it to its proper place.

Searchable tags

Looking for Ivy League, Jesuit or NESCAC schools to add to your list? It's easy with tags. Simply type in the tag and we'll bring up the schools we cover that fit the bill. Try "Ivy", "Jesuit", "Nescac", "Pac12", "ACC", "SEC", "Big10","BigEast", "Big12", "7Sisters", "Public", "Private" or even "CTCL" for Colleges That Change Lives.

New SAT format support

College Kickstart now accepts either the new SAT (1600 based) or old SAT format (2400 based).

Specific GPA and rank

You can now enter your specific unweighted GPA and rank instead of selecting from bands. Though most schools continue to report GPA and rank using bands, there are some instances where knowing your specific GPA will help us better assess your academic competitiveness.

A new Premium Edition

The Premium edition of College Kickstart for Students and Parents includes all of the great features of the Plus edition, as well as support for lists of 6-30 schools and the introduction of valuable financial aid data. It'll give you added flexibility as you're evaluating schools early on in the process, help ensure that schools of interest are likely to meet your affordability constraints, and help you locate safety schools with generous merit aid.

Tags: College Kickstart

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