<p>We recently launched this new college</a> savings and loan calculator and are looking for some honest feedback. We're hoping to better prepare parents for long term college costs. Anyone have suggestions how we can improve this tool? Thanks!</p>
<p>The loan calculator is very useful and would definitely help in the transparency of the loan process. Have you every thought about adding something in where you can select your major and it gives you the starting annual salary and will tell you what percentage of your salary you will most likely need to pay for your loans? Then maybe state if that is affordable or unaffordable. Possibly factor in employment possibilities (ie, engineers are, on average, more likely to find employment than an architects, so an architect should take out x amount less).</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>I like it.</p>
<p>The only issue I see with it is that it uses the darn “average” tuition rates colleges publish. I live in Michigan, and I can tell you that both the public U where I used to work and the public U my son currently attends cost a lot more than the “average” tuition if a student takes enough credits to actually graduate in four years. The schools are using 12 credits, which is full time for financial aid; it is not full time for purposes of actually graduation on time. Other schools are using more than 12 credits, but not what most would think of as a full load. I think it is very misleading, and it will lead to an even greater shortfall in calculating costs.</p>
<p>For example, S’s school says tuition is a little more than $9900 for a year. His tuition is actually about $12,000 for 16 credits per term.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback. We will explore adding these additional data categories to the site. As I said, we just launched so there is still a lot of room for improvement. </p>
<p>What type of information do you feel is more beneficial, future college cost projection or loan and affordability calculation?</p>
<p>I like the graph that shows balance, interest, etc. for the loan repayment. However on my computer the lower axis doesn’t show any numbers. Is that the way it is supposed to be? Granted it would be hard to squeeze in marks for each of 120 payments (or even more), but it would be useful if there were marks for each year for loans paid off in 10 years, or every 2 years for loans that run longer than that.</p>
<p>For the sections on planning for future college costs, it would be useful if you would include a note about the average percentage increase over the past X years or so. Something like “For the past 20 years tuition and fees at This College/University, have increased at an average rate of 6% per year.” Leaving it up to the user to imagine will lead many of them to grossly under-estimate the rate of increase.</p>
<p>Likewise, a note about projecting long-term interest rates for college savings would be good. That can vary quite considerably from one type of investment to another, and as we all know too well, from one year to another.</p>