For many students, three basic goals in college are as follows: achieve success, save money and graduate on time.

A new comprehensive online student planner called MyEdu was unveiled earlier this month that claims to do all that and more.

Through various planning tools and partnerships with colleges across the nation, MyEdu consolidates multiple academic data to provide numerous ways to organize a student’s path toward graduation.

According to MyEdu.com, “School Web sites, degree catalogs, course descriptions, class schedules, key dates and course difficulty data are hard to find and a challenge to compile. MyEdu reduces the complexity and puts it all in one place.”

All the information on colleges on MyEdu is verified 70 times a semester, both automatically by computers and manually by copy editors to guarantee accuracy.

The Web site’s philosophy is “to provide the essential tools, information and support needed to gain greater visibility and control over the education process.”

Nonetheless, it does come with a price.

The “light” version of MyEdu costs $10 a year and is a condensed form of the full MyEdu account, which offers all of its features and is available for $20 a year.

Before purchasing a subscription to MyEdu, students may test it out by registering for a free three-day trial that includes all of the elements of a full account.

MyEdu features seven main tools for student planning and academic development:

The College Explorer is a college search engine that allows students to search for schools based on a variety of factors. It then provides the option to personalize and save information in an interactive workspace to evaluate choices for schools and degrees.

The Degree Analyzer is a process for contrasting degrees and credit requirements between schools, which may make transferring credits to other schools easier. According to MyEdu.com, it also can “simplify the process of selecting a major that satisfies career and education goals to reduce the likelihood of taking extra semesters to graduate.”

The Degree Planner enables students to create their plans using online degree catalogs from the universities of their choice with course, credit and timing details. It also allows them to get feedback from parents and advisors and manage progress toward their degree by tallying their credits.

The Graduation Roadmap helps students organize their academic requirements in a MyEdu workspace to create a graduation plan segmented by semester. It automatically integrates information from the Degree Planner to ensure course requirements are met.

The Schedule Planner is a program that allows students to choose classes based on schedule times, student reviews, grading patterns, drop rates, friends, professor expectations or extracurricular activities.

The Education Network enables students, parents, advisors and professors to collaborate to ensure students complete their degree. Students are in control of their privacy and how much information each party is allowed to view.

The Academic Dashboard resembles a meter, but is a visual representation of progress toward the completion of a student’s degree. It also reports class selections, analyzes grade point average, displays degree progress and stores advisor feedback.

The creators of the popular professor evaluation Web site, Pick-A-Prof, decided to convert their Web site to a more comprehensive and multifunctional application. This led to the site’s transformation into MyEdu.

“It’s Pick-A-Prof, only 10 times more information, data and tools available,” said Karen Holst, vice president of marketing and business development at MyEdu. “It shows every degree, course and professor from each school.”

Students with current Pick-A-Prof memberships will have their account transferred automatically to MyEdu, where the account will remain active until its expiration.

Some Marquette students believe this would be a welcomed alternative or addition to the CheckMarq Web site, such as Nick Malcolm, a sophomore in the College of Business Administration.

“CheckMarq doesn’t have all of the functions that MyEdu seems to have,” Malcolm said. “It’s pretty cheap. I’d probably spend an extra $20 a year to have access to it. Marquette students should look into using it.”

Ashley Heding, a senior at Homestead High School in Mequon, also expressed interest in the Web site.

“It would really help with the application process,” Heding said. “There are so many colleges out there, and not too many ways to search for them.”