pleased to announce the launch of its Veteran Tuition Calculator–an innovative recruitment tool designed to provide transparent financial information on college affordability for veterans and enable colleges to quickly identify and engage with prospective students.
Since its inception over 3 years ago, been focused on its mission of improving the transition process for veterans into higher education and beyond. In our quest to deliver the most transparent and user-friendly web apps to bridge the disconnect between veterans and colleges, we’ve interviewed and spoken with hundreds, and possibly thousands, of veterans, seeking to understand what problems they face during the college search and application process. Want to know the first major question veterans have when it comes to researching programs? It’s trying to understand exactly how their earned GI Bill benefits will apply to the institution (and other institutions they are interested in), to figure out the net cost of attendance.
In short, the problem is a lack of transparency among colleges in showing the cost and financial implications of pursuing higher education. When visiting a college’s webpage, prospective student veterans are seeking information about their GI Bill benefits to understand what, if anything, they will have to pay for out-of-pocket to attend. Without detailed information and tools to demonstrate cost and affordability, veterans visiting a college’s website are much more likely to leave the page empty-handed, without engaging with the institution. To address this problem, some colleges offer a net price calculator that includes basic veterans’ benefits information. However, these tools are often buried in the financial aid portion of the college’s website, away from other veterans’ services information. Even if veterans do locate the NPC, they must provide detailed financial information and wade through federal student financial aid benefits before they receive relevant information concerning their GI Bill.
So, tossed the net price calculator model of doing things out the window, because we believe anything that takes more than 5 minutes to complete and requires excessive amounts of personal information significantly hinders cost transparency rather than helping to improve it. Instead, we decided to focus on maximizing transparency of tuition and fee costs through a simple, easy-to-use tool. Our Veteran Tuition Calculator app embeds directly within an institution’s webpage and allows prospective student veterans to get an accurate estimate of their net cost to attend the college using their Post-9/11 GI Bill® benefits, all within less than 8 clicks of the mouse, or approximately 30 seconds. All of the calculator logic is grounded in policy and documentation provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs, to help colleges comply with federal requirements under the Principles of Exellence. As an added benefit, the calculator offers an integrated contact form that allows veteran users to submit a copy of their calculator results, contact information, and questions directly to the institution, to assist colleges in converting site visitors to applicants.
Want to see our solution in action? Check out our product demo video on YouTube.
Some other neat facts about our drop-in tuition calculator:
- Blazing Fast Speed through Minimizing “Asks” for the User:
One very common and accepted best practice in achieving high levels of user interaction is that the more time, effort, and data input you require from users, the fewer users will engage with your tool and complete the input process, due to the added complexity, or “user ask,” and time required. We designed our tuition calculator app to be as easy and fast as possible by requiring the absolute minimum number of inputs from the user in order to give an accurate GI Bill benefit estimate. - Turning Interactions into Conversions:
We focused on optimizing a college’s conversions of “stealth” site visitors into known prospects that contact the institution by making it easier than ever for veterans to engage with the college via an integrated contact form. When a user submits the contact form, the college’s admissions and/or veterans’ services staff will instantly receive a copy of the user’s contact information, selected options, calculator results, and previously earned credits/transfer information, giving the institution a detailed snapshot of the veteran’s military and education background and the ability to directly connect with the prospect. - Easy Installation Backed by Great Customer Service:
Best of all, our calculator requires virtually no extra work for your IT staff to install and maintain. provides a single line of code to integrate into the college’s website, allowing the calculator to instantly appear. In the event an institution experiences issues, we will work with them to diagnose and quickly resolve the problem.
