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.

We're pleased to announce an important new update for our Counselor Preview participants.  This update incorporates much of the great feedback you've provided in recent weeks as well as some new capabilities we think you'll find helpful:

• A streamlined user experience
• New modes of operation 
• New financial aid capabilities
• Expanded coverage universe

Click on Continue Reading for the details. 

An update to College Kickstart 2015 has just been posted! 

In addition to Class of 2019 admission rate updates to our database, this release features an enhanced Plan Highlights page to help Plus Edition subscribers get organized and track admission requirements for the schools on their list.  If you're a Plus Edition subscriber, you'll now be able to see application requirements at a glance for all of the schools on your list, including testing, recommendations, interviews and most importantly, essay counts! 

Click on Continue Reading for the details. 

We've designed College Kickstart for ease of use, but there's plenty more under the covers for those looking for it.  In this blog post, we'll take you through five "hidden" features that can improve both your productivity and understanding of how College Kickstart does its thing:

1. Bulk loading schools to your list
2. Improving your list grade with MixFixer
3. Finding additional school ideas with MixFixer
4. Using popups for greater clarity
5. Using the Plan Highlight page to get organized

An update to College Kickstart 2015 has just been posted! 

This release features a new Plan Highlights page to help you get organized and track admission requirements for each school on your list.  We've also added two new MixFixer™ filters to help you find safeties, targets and reaches with greater ease, and updated our database with the latest admission rates for University of California campuses.  

Click on continue reading for the details. 

We're pleased to announce the latest release of College Kickstart 2015!  You'll notice faster performance, updated admissions data (including 2019 admission rates for several top schools), expanded school coverage, and for College Kickstart Plus users, over 200 department-specific admission rates across 34 public and private institutions.

Click on continue reading for the details. 

We're pleased to announce the availability of College Kickstart 2015 release 1.1.  In addition to updated admissions data for 75+ schools, this release features a new and improved MixFixer™ to help you "bulletproof" your college list with ease.

What's a MixFixer?

MixFixer is the fastest and easiest way to set your college list up for success.  It kicks in once College Kickstart has graded your list and recommended ways to strengthen it.  MixFixer does three things:

• It categorizes. MixFixer automatically categorizes every school in our database into safeties, targets and reaches based on school admission rates and your academic profile.  

• It filters. MixFilter provides filters to help you quickly narrow down your choices.

• It corrects. MixFilter helps you take corrective action by adding schools of interest to your list and re-running the analysis.  Improve that D- to an A in no time!

What's new?

This release includes several new filters that you've asked for, in addition to a new special filter that will help you locate "good value" schools:

• Filter by school size.  You can now filter schools by the total undergraduate population.  Three options are offered: small (<2,500 undergrads), medium (2,500-10,000) and large (10,000+).

• Filter by setting.  You can also filter by school setting: rural, suburban and urban.

• Filter by geographical region. You can narrow down schools by geography, including the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Mountain and Pacific regions.

• Filter by indebtedness.  Is a public school cheaper than a private school?  Not always, after you factor in financial aid.  One useful way to figure out bang for buck is to find schools that leave you with little debt after graduation.  In other words, schools that are either cheap to begin with our schools that are terrific with financial aid and in particular, scholarships/grants.  Our new indebtedness filter looks specifically for schools that on average leave those taking financial aid with less than $20,000 of debt at graduation.  That's all four years.  Check it out, you'll be surprised by the results!  

Getting Started

To access MixFixer, run Kickstart and simply click on the Find Safeties, Find Targets or Find Reaches button in the List Check tab.

College Kickstart 2015 is here!

Two editions are available in this year's lineup:

• Standard Edition ($50/season), which includes support for lists of 6-12 schools from our database of 250+ top U.S. colleges and universities

• Plus Edition ($70/season), which includes support for lists of 6-20 schools and an enhanced database of 400+ entities.  

Both editions continue to offer the same great features to help you put together a sensible college plan, and are available for less than the cost of an application. 

Learn more

We've designed College Kickstart for simplicity, but there's plenty more under the covers for those looking for more.  In this blog post, we'll take you through five "hidden" features that can improve both your productivity and understanding of how College Kickstart does its thing:

1. Bulk loading schools to your list
2. Improving your list grade with MixFixer
3. Finding additional school ideas with MixFixer
4. Using popups for greater clarity
5. Putting commitment checkboxes to work