Net price calculators: 3 key trends we’ve learned

In any business, knowing what your clients want is pivotal to success. Student recruitment in higher education is no exception. Providing students and parents with the information they are seeking in an easy-to-find, easy-to-use format is critical to accomplishing your recruitment goals. In an era of rising educational costs, providing accurate information on the cost to attend college has become a crucial part of the search process, so much so that the federal government mandated that all campuses have to display a net price calculator (NPC).

To help campuses meet this mandate, Noel-Levitz developed an NPC called the TrueCost Calculator. Since its inception in 2010, nearly one million users have completed estimates on more than 215 campus Web sites using our NPC. These users have provided a wealth of data that illustrate how NPCs can not only inform families about the cost to attend college, but can also be an advantageous tool in the recruitment process. Let’s take a look at three specific trends that highlight how you can maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your NPCs.

1. Timing is everything

By tracking NPC usage statistics throughout the year, it is easy to see cyclical patterns develop. The summer months see a dramatic increase in usage from the winter and spring months, culminating in another spike in September and October, before gradually sliding back down to a steady flow in the winter. Armed with the knowledge of when users are visiting NPCs, admissions offices can readjust their tactics and help promote their NPC in order to push potential families to their Web site and capture a greater amount of demographic information on these inquiries.

During the summer before their senior years, many students begin to increase the amount of research for their college selection process. These students are looking for specific information: available scholarships. Once students have collected the scholarship information available to them, they narrow down their potential pool of institutions and often turn to their parents to help assess the full cost of attending a particular college or university. The higher level of completion rates in late fall demonstrate an increase in parent usage. Parents are also the more likely party to complete the financial aid portion of NPCs, which leads us into our next trend.

2. Money talks

As noted above, the majority of initial research is performed by students asking a single question: how much scholarship money am I eligible for? Of course, the answer to that question varies from campus to campus. When we developed the TrueCost Calculator, we knew that we had to allow institutions to customize their NPC to show students all of their estimated scholarship eligibility. We also encouraged students to provide their name and e-mail address to receive their estimate by e-mail and speak with a campus financial aid representative, an advantage many schools have capitalized on. However, ease of completion is also key, as an incomplete NPC is a lost recruitment opportunity.

Compared to institutions requiring students to enter all of their financial information before displaying scholarship eligibility, campuses providing quick and easy scholarship results are seeing much higher numbers on total usage statistics, student information provided, and students wishing to be contacted directly by the institution. For instance, more than 71 percent of all users who start the Noel-Levitz calculator complete the scholarship portion, with well over half of those students continuing on to finish the full financial aid calculation. We also see the completion rate increase sharply in the fall as opposed to the summer months, as parents now are more likely to become involved and fill out the financial information needed to produce a full estimated package. If your NPC does not have the capability of producing scholarship information quickly to students, you could be losing a chance to connect with students and you may want to take a second look at your NPC solution.

Now that we know who is using the calculator, when they are using the NPC, and what they are looking for, the third important part is placing the NPC on your Web site.

3. Location, location, location

Placing a NPC on an institution’s Web site is always a topic for internal discussion. Based on our statistics and usage summaries, there is one simple rule to generating high numbers for both total usage and completion rates… make the NPC easy to find. Among campuses using the TrueCost Calculator, certain schools have separated themselves from the pack with regard to their statistics, and they all have a few placement characteristics in common.

The first one is placing the NPC within three clicks of the homepage. This could be done by placing links to your NPC in several clearly visible areas on your Web site (i.e.  admissions homepage, financial aid homepage, or in your Web site’s main navigation menus). By linking the NPC in any or all of those areas, your institution can increase traffic dramatically. Many of the successful institutions have gone a step further and have created a “Paying for College” page. They feature the NPC prominently on that page, alongside additional or competitive scholarship information as well as general cost information. A link to this “Paying for College” site is again displayed in an area of the homepage that students and parents are likely to view in the first few moments of being on your Web site.

The final characteristic these institutions share is the marketing strategies they couple with their effective Web placement. Several of our most successful campuses have really sought to feature their NPCs as an integral tool of their student recruitment process. The strategies we have seen employed range from large direct marketing campaigns to admission counselors (who are already using the NPC as their primary tool for estimating aid while they are on the road) chatting with families about the ease and speed of using their NPC. If your NPC is set up effectively and efficiently, any amount of marketing and placement can have a beneficial effect on your usage and completion statistics.

While these are just a few of the trends we are seeing nationwide, it is important to ensure that you are getting the most out of your NPC. This federal regulation does not have to be a detriment to student recruitment on your campus—in fact, quite the opposite. By taking the suggestions above and understanding how they may affect your potential inquiries, properly developed NPCs can put your campus in the best light with regard to cost, create a connection with prospective students, and provide an advantage over your competition.

I will be discussing these and other NPC strategies at a free Webinar on April 19, Shaping Student Enrollment With Net Price Calculators.  I am also happy to answer any questions you have about NPCs and student recruitment. Just send me an e-mail.

Whatever you do, as the “summer surge” of NPC use approaches, I urge you to make sure your NPC is positioning your campus as competitively as possible while also meeting the information needs of students and their families.