What's new
A plan for a simpler planner. Students who tried the planner told us it showed too much. One said the early-rounds step was "stressing me out." The plan for the next version asks for less and does more of the work for you:
- Plan moves into the main menu, next to Explore, and works the same way for students and parents.
- Your numbers come first. Enter your GPA and the one test you're taking, and every college on your list is sorted into Reach, Target, or Likely for you. Tap a group to change it, and the site keeps your choice.
- One row per college. Each row shows your Dream, the group, the round, and the deadline. The reasons are one tap away. Ranking your list is gone.
- Rounds start from your Dream. If your Dream offers early decision, it starts there. Other colleges use early action wherever it's free. You change any round with one tap, and conflicts show up as a single sentence.
- A scores coach. It shows where your score stands at each college and whether to send it. It suggests another test only when a typical gain would move a college up a group, along with the test dates whose scores arrive in time.
- A family calendar. Parents get a color-coded timeline of the school year for each child or for everyone: deadlines, decisions, test dates, and the money dates that are their part.
The full plan is on the roadmap.
Behind the scenes
The rules that sort colleges and start rounds are already written and tested. Both run in the browser, so the list re-sorts as you type a score. Colleges that report only the other test's range are compared through the official ACT/SAT concordance. A preview with a made-up family and real college data runs on review copies of the site, not the live one.