3 Tuition Cost Calculators... visit and compare
The Link of the Week email sent yesterday highlighted the second-most desired website actiivity by college bound high school students... a tuition cost calculator.
The College of New Jersey
The featured link was at The College of New Jersey at http://www.tcnj.edu/~admiss/costs.html
Purdue University
A few hours after the email was out and about the land, Mary King at Purdue University sent along a link to the "Tuition and Fees Calculator" available for "several years" at http://www.purdue.edu/Bursar/Calculator/2006-2007/Welcome.html
Arcadia University
And this morning Bob Fesler, Jr. at Think Ahead, Inc sent along a link to Arcadia Universities calculator at http://finaid.arcadia.edu/calc/cac72C133start.html along with a note that his firm had also built this feature for Williams, Amherst, and the University of Arizona.
That should give everyone interested places to start visiting. I haven't completed all of these forms, but you'll see right away that the approach of each is different from the others. So take time to experiment with them and identify the features you think would most benefit your students. Check for ease of use, time to complete, cost elements included and whatever else comes to mind.
When a highly desired website feature benefits your visitors, the reputation of your brand grows as well. Financial aid and scholarship estimators and tuition cost calculators should receive high traffic on your website if interested visitors can find them easily enough. To make them work best for you, check these two points:
- Be sure they are very visible at least from your first admissions page.
- Be sure that if a visitor types variations on "tuition cost" into your search engine on the front page of your website, the response takes them to your calculator.