Student Aid Services Improves Colleges’ Enrollment Yield by Offering Prospective Students Insight Into Their Affordability

DENVER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- To help colleges respond to prospective students’ heightened financial anxiety, Student Aid Services, Inc., the leading provider of college-cost estimation and enrollment-enhancement services, today introduces a dynamic and custom communication service that shows individuals their specific affordability and academic fit. While providing students new insight about a college’s value, the Personal Student Prospectus™ (PSP), which can be designed to meet the requirements of the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet, enables colleges and universities to improve their enrollment yields significantly.

Early PSP adopter Fordham University of New York sought to be transparent about net price earlier in the college-choice process than the formal aid award timetable permits.

“We also wanted to place net price in the context of academic program information so families received a clear, individualized message focused on both value and affordability,” said Peter A. Stace, Ph.D., Fordham’s Vice President of Enrollment. “Our survey of admitted students and their parents show that more than 90 percent of respondents found our Personal Student Prospectus to be clear, which is pretty remarkable for a document dealing with net price, and the vast majority reported that the information made Fordham more attractive.”

The Personal Student Prospectus is a key element of Student Aid Services’ Enrollment Enhancement™ Solution being showcased Oct. 4 to 6 during the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s (NACAC) 2012 National Conference in Denver in Booth #624.

Data collected by a Student Aid Services’ custom net price calculator (NPC) is used to dynamically generate a Personal Student Prospectus, a high-quality, color booklet personalized to communicate a student’s financial, academic and social fit with a college or university. Each custom Personal Student Prospectus conveys academic, housing and other information directly meaningful to that individual.

“This new opportunity to quickly and easily produce a custom communication about an individual’s fit with an institution early in the college-search process, starts a dialog that moves families beyond price to value,” said Matthew M. Summer, Student Aid Services’ Vice President of Business Development. “Early adopters of our Personal Student Prospectus have experienced as much as 20 percent increases in enrollment yields.”

PSP Meets Financial Aid Shopping Sheet Requirements

Because of the flexibility of its design and production, the Personal Student Prospectus™ can meet the standards of the federally-encouraged Financial Aid Shopping Sheet, an individualized financial aid award letter that will help prospective undergraduate students understand their costs so they can compare schools’ affordability and make smart decisions.

The Personal Student Prospectus allows colleges and universities to highlight a wide range of information about their value, from grants and scholarships to special programs such as Honors courses and athletics.

“We found Student Aid Services had the experience with online needs assessment that we were seeking, and the unique ability to create custom communications based on the information prospective students provided when using our net price calculator,” said Jon Boeckenstedt, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management and Marketing for DePaul University of Chicago. “In addition, Student Aid Services was enthusiastic about tailoring our NPC and Personal Student Prospectus to meet our needs; ours was not an “off the rack” solution, and SAS rose to the challenge and delivered just what we wanted.”

A Bronze Sponsor of the three-day NACAC conference, Student Aid Services will feature its Enrollment-Enhancement Solution during a public presentation Oct. 4 from 3:15 to 4 p.m. at the NACAC Learning Lounge in the Exhibit Hall of the Colorado Convention Center. Student Aid Services also is sponsoring the conference’s End of the Day 5K Race Oct. 5 at 6:30 p.m. at Riverfront Plaza at 1600 Little Raven Street and Basset Circle.

About Student Aid Services, Inc.

Student Aid Services, Inc. is the leading provider of college-cost estimation and enrollment-enhancement services and technologies that help students and families understand how to plan and pay for college. Its custom, online calculators are used by 700 campuses in the U.S. and Canada. Student Aid Services’ predictive technology offers prospective and current students accurate need, merit and military aid eligibility; net price; and out-of-pocket cost estimates that are reliable for education planning. Student Aid Services’ advanced technology can use modified federal and institutional need analysis, replicate term and non-term aid-packaging policies, accommodate sophisticated institutional packaging and neighboring states’ portable aid programs, and support multiple cost of attendance to provide highly personalized cost estimates. Student Aid Services is a private company with headquarters in Sacramento, CA, USA. www.studentaidservices.com

© Rezolve Group and Student Aid Services, Inc., 2012. All Rights Reserved. Student Aid Services, ThinkAhead, and the Personal Student Prospectus are trademarks of the Rezolve Group, Inc. in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

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Student Aid Services, Inc.
Mary A. C. Fallon, 916-629-7050
Communications Consultant
mfallon@studentaidservices.com

Source: Student Aid Services, Inc.