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Net Price Calculator

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How NetPriceCalc Works

The Department of Education publishes three sets of table data each year for determining eligibility. From a series of questions, each candidate is classified in one of these three groups:

1. Independent students with dependent children;
2. Independent students without dependent children; or
3. Dependent students.

The first few questions in NetPriceCalc will determine which of these three groups a candidate fits into.

From there, the follow-up questions determine the Expected Family Contribution (EFC), based on the number of people in the family, number of family members in college, and household income.

After arriving at an EFC, the calculation is very simple:

Expenses - Aid = Net Price

Click here for a flowchart of NetPriceCalc's logic (PDF).

Under the Hood

The internal workings of NetPriceCalc are very different from the Department of Education's offering. While the logic is nearly identical, our implementation gives us a lot of room for new features, flexible delivery, and scalability.

On our web site, your calculator runs as a "common gateway interface" (CGI) program. This has been a web standard since the days when the most popular web browser was NCSA Mosaic. When your students submit answers to NPC's questions, the CGI processes them and determines which follow-up questions should be asked.

At some point, NetPriceCalc has all the information it needs to make a determination of net price. When it has everything, it queries a SQL database to get the federal EFC and aid values, as well as those values unique to your institution. The final computation is displayed neatly as HTML.

The decision to go with CGI and HTML for NetPriceCalc was driven by a desire to see this product work in every browser, even if users have disabled a bunch of plug-ins or scripting languages. We wanted this to work for everyone, all the time.

The decision to use SQL for data storage was easy. It allows administrators to make quick changes to their fees, aid, and contact information. It allows for custom warnings and disclaimers. When next year's FAFSA tables are released, we will update our federal tables exactly once. It'll take us about about an hour. No one will have to upgrade anything, download anything, etc. This is what good software looks like. :-)

News

July 10, 2012

V2R6 updated for Academic Year 2012-13. Click for info.

July 9, 2012

Moved production server to ARP Networks in Los Angeles.

September 12, 2011

V2R6 released for Academic Year 2011-12. Features and usability update.

June 16, 2011

The HTML version of the manual has been completed and posted here.

May 30, 2011

V2R4 Released for Academic Year 2011-2012.