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The College Board, the nonprofit association of colleges and universities that oversees the SAT and Advanced Placement program, has introduced a new college planning Web site that it hopes will help a wide range of students, including first-generation college students who may not know much about the college admissions process.

The College Board

BigFuture, which was introduced last Tuesday, includes a college search tool revamped from the organization’s previous planning site, as well as a scholarship search tool and a customizable action plan for students about to embark on journeys through the college admissions process.

“The old site did have a lot of information,” said Roy Ben-Yoseph, who led the development of BigFuture, “but this was completely rewritten with students in mind.”

The new site is the product of a multimillion-dollar investment and has been two years in the making, said Sandra Riley, a spokeswoman for the College Board. Both the SAT and A.P. program, among other products and services sold by the organization, have links on the BigFuture home page.

Nonetheless, Ms. Riley said, BigFuture will be an “objective source,” adding, “Students and educators helped build the site.”

The designers of the site said they hoped to level the playing field between those savvy students who are practically admissions experts in their own right, and other students with minimal knowledge about the process. Students who may be the first in their families to attend college or are assigned to an overworked guidance counselor should find plenty of resources to plan their path to college on the site, Mr. Ben-Yoseph said.

“All students deserve access to good guidance,” Mr. Ben-Yoseph said. “Some may say, ‘Everyone knows the difference between a public and a private school,’ but the fact is, not all students know.”

For students who don’t know, there’s a slide show for that.

There are also videos — more than 100 of them — including ones showing an admission officer at Yale who discusses how to begin the college search, an administrator at Notre Dame who debunks financial aid myths, and a college student who says colleges look at more than just grades.

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For students who are pessimistic about their potential, an affiliate site, YouCanGo, showcases college students who overcame college costs and low grades to further their education.

There are several opportunities to explore (your interests, college majors, different institutions); research how to pay for college; and, as many seniors are doing these days, decide where to enroll.

BigFuture is the product of an unlikely marriage between the College Board and the Education Conservancy, whose leader, Lloyd Thacker, has criticized the “corporatization” of the board and the commercialization of the college admissions process.

On Thursday, Jim Montoya, the vice president of relationship development for the College Board, who has known Mr. Thacker for two decades, cast the collaboration as a complementary pairing of efforts to help underserved students. “We’re lucky, as they say, that we found each other,” Mr. Montoya said.

Officials said they expected the site to evolve so that it more specifically meets the needs of middle-school and nontraditional students, too.

“The hope is really that a student can take advantage of this for a long time,” Ms. Riley said. “The thing we’re most focused on in our advocacy is increasing the college completion rate.”

What do you think of the College Board’s new BigFuture Web site? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.