Every figure on this site comes from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard, the same federal dataset that powers collegescorecard.ed.gov. It's built from data schools are required to report to the federal government, so it's independent of anything a school's marketing office publishes.
We include the 2,207 four-year, degree-granting colleges and universities currently operating in the dataset — community colleges, certificate-only schools, and closed institutions are left out to keep the search focused on traditional four-year admissions.
Net price is what students actually paid on average after grants and scholarships — usually a much more realistic number than the sticker "tuition & fees" price, especially at schools with generous financial aid. The net-price-by-income breakdown on each school's page shows how that number changes for families at different income levels; use it alongside the school's own official Net Price Calculator, linked on every profile, for a personalized estimate.
Diversity figures reflect the current undergraduate student body, self-reported by the institution to the federal government. Special designations like HBCU (Historically Black College or University), HSI (Hispanic-Serving Institution), and PBI (Predominantly Black Institution) are federally defined classifications, not marketing terms.
Outcomes (graduation rates, retention, and post-graduation earnings) are institution-wide averages. They describe the typical student at that school, not any individual student's likely outcome — a strong student can outperform a low average, and vice versa.
Some smaller schools or programs show "Not reported" for certain figures — this usually means the federal government suppresses the number to protect student privacy when a group is very small, not that the school withheld it.
Many families rule schools out based on the sticker price alone. It's worth knowing: most colleges — especially selective private ones — offer need-based aid that can make the real cost far lower than tuition suggests, and application fee waivers are available for families who qualify, no waiting for a counselor required. If cost is a concern, start with the net-price-by-income figures on each school's profile before crossing a school off the list.
The Find My Schools page and the Build My List page share one estimate and one set of categories, so a school always lands in the same category on both. Find My Schools shows every four-year school sorted by category; Build My List picks a balanced list for you, or checks a list you already have, and adds legacy, early-round, and home-state options. The categories are described in the next section.
Each school's chance starts from its acceptance rate, adjusted for where your SAT (or ACT, converted with the official 2018 ACT/College Board concordance) falls in the school's 25th-75th percentile range of admitted students, and for your GPA if you enter one (blank GPA is treated as average). GPA is a rough multiplier, not a measured effect: College Scorecard does not publish admitted students' GPA, class rank, or course rigor. A student's real chances depend on those at least as much as test scores, especially at holistic-review schools.
Both pages estimate your chance at each school and sort schools into four categories using these cutoffs (they don't overlap, so every school lands in exactly one):
Each estimate starts from the school's acceptance rate, adjusts it for where your SAT (or ACT, converted with the official concordance) falls in the school's 25th-75th percentile range of admitted students, and applies a modest multiplier for GPA (about 1.25x at 3.9+, 1.0x at 3.5-3.69, 0.7x at 3.0-3.29, lower below that). Schools under a 25% acceptance rate are capped at twice their acceptance rate, since stats alone can't make an elite school likely. The GPA multiplier and the score sensitivity are judgment calls, not fitted to real admissions outcomes, and College Scorecard has no GPA or course-rigor data, so treat the estimates as rough.
Home state: in-state vs. out-of-state. If you enter a home state on Build My List, public schools show an In-state or Out-of-state tag and an estimated net price for you (the school's average net price plus the out-of-state tuition premium; it ignores aid you might get as an out-of-state student, so treat it as rough). For admission chances, the data has no residency breakdown, so we only adjust where published figures show a large gap: UVA (about 23% in-state vs 12.5% out-of-state), UNC Chapel Hill (about 37% vs 9.6%), the University of Michigan (about 39% vs 15%, estimated), Georgia Tech (about 28% vs 9%, where the out-of-state figure includes international applicants), the University of Florida (about 38% vs 14%, estimated), and UT Austin (about 36% vs 7.5%). Where reported rates were similar or reversed (William & Mary, Maryland, Rutgers, Princeton, Virginia Tech) we leave the overall rate alone and say so on the card. Every other school uses its overall rate. These figures come from consultant and news summaries of each school's own releases and Common Data Sets, they change each year, and some are estimates, so check the school's admissions office for current numbers. Private schools are not adjusted.
Distance from home. Search Schools, Find My Schools, and Build My List let you enter a ZIP code and a maximum distance in miles, show how far each school is, and sort by closest (on Build My List, choose Closest to home under Optional preferences). Distances are straight-line miles between the center of your ZIP code and the school's campus, so driving distance will be longer. ZIP codes are matched against a table from the U.S. Census Bureau that is bundled with this site, so your ZIP code never leaves your device. A few schools have no campus coordinates in the federal data; they are left out whenever you set a mileage limit. Some ZIP codes (such as PO box-only codes) aren't in the table, so if yours isn't found, try a nearby one.
Already have a list? Switch to I already have a list at the top of the Build My List page. Add each school, set your legacy status and application round for it, and you get the same chance estimates, categories, and at least n acceptances matrix for your own list, plus a note if it looks unbalanced (for example no safety school, or too many reaches). The schools you add carry over if you switch to building a list for you.
Legacy and early rounds. You can add specific schools to your list and mark a legacy connection (parent undergraduate, parent graduate school, or sibling/other) and an application round (regular, early action, or binding early decision) for any school. These only apply where you set them and only meaningfully at selective schools: a parent-undergraduate legacy multiplies your odds by about 3x at schools admitting under 25% of applicants (1.5x at 25-50%, none above), a parent-graduate connection about 1.5x, a sibling about 1.15x; early action about 2x, and early decision about 2.5x, at schools under 25% (smaller boosts at less selective schools). These multipliers are rough judgment calls based on published early-versus-regular admit rates and a few old legacy studies, discounted because early and legacy applicants tend to be stronger anyway; schools publish very little here and rules vary (some count only certain relatives, and not every school has an early round). A boosted school is judged by its adjusted chance, not by its low overall acceptance rate. Early decision is binding, so schools normally allow it at only one school.
Within each category, the list favors the schools where you have the highest chance by default; you can switch to highest graduation rate or lowest net price under Optional preferences. The at least n acceptances matrix uses those estimates. By default it allows for the fact that schools judge the same application, so results tend to move together (a strong year helps everywhere, a weak one hurts everywhere); that lowers the chance of at least one acceptance and raises the chance of several or none compared with treating each school as a separate coin flip.
The Diversity Search page lets you set a minimum undergraduate percentage for any race/ethnicity group College Scorecard reports — Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, White, American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Two or More Races, and International students — and see only schools that meet every threshold you set. "Match National Averages" pre-fills the Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, and Two or More Races fields using recent national undergraduate averages (roughly 11%, 19%, 6%, and 4%) as a floor; you can adjust any of them from there.
Each school also shows a Diversity Index (technically, Simpson's Diversity Index): the probability that two students picked at random from the school are from different race/ethnicity groups. It's a useful single-number way to sort by "how mixed is the student body," but it rewards an even spread across many groups specifically — it does not directly measure representation of any one underrepresented group. A school that's 75% one group and small slices of several others can score lower on this index than a school with no dominant majority, even if the first school serves an important access role for that group (this is common at HBCUs, for instance). If a specific group's representation is what matters to your family, use the % filters above rather than relying on the index alone.
College Scorecard has nothing on extracurricular activities, so this section of each school's profile comes from a different source: the school's own Common Data Set, a standard form most colleges publish every year. Section C7 asks how much each factor counts in first-year admission decisions, and the school answers Very Important, Important, Considered, or Not Considered for things like extracurricular activities, talent or ability, character, volunteer work, and work experience, next to academic factors such as grades, course rigor, and test scores.
This is a rating of how much a factor matters, not a list of what admitted students did. No official source publishes individual students' activities. Common Data Sets are separate documents with no federal database, so the ratings come from two places. Roughly 350 schools are covered using collegedata.fyi, an open-source project that reads each school's own published Common Data Set; we left out documents it flags as incomplete, blank, or the wrong file. For a handful of schools we also read the school's PDF ourselves and checked it against the table, and every value we could compare matched once the document year was the same. Profiles say which kind of source a rating comes from, show the year, and link to the document. For schools without a rating, the profile links to a search for that school's Common Data Set (section C7 is usually around pages 8 to 12). Ratings can change from one year to the next, and some holistic-review schools answer "Considered" for nearly everything.
A few things families sometimes look for aren't in the federal College Scorecard dataset this site is built on, so you won't find them here: the percentage of admitted or enrolled students who ranked in the top 10% of their high school class, the percentage who came from public vs. private high schools, the percentage of test-optional applicants who chose to submit scores, and actual class size (the share of classes under 20 or over 50 students, for example) — that last one is collected by the Common Data Set, a separate voluntary survey most colleges fill out for guidebooks and rankings, not by the federal government. What is available and shown on every school's page: whether a school requires, recommends, or doesn't require test scores (its test-optional status), the percentage of students receiving Pell Grants, the percentage who are first-generation college students, the percentage of international students, and the school-wide student-to-faculty ratio — a reasonable stand-in for "how much individual attention is likely," even though it isn't the same as knowing how many students sit in a given lecture hall.
Curtis College Prep doesn't use accounts, doesn't have a server-side database, and doesn't track you. Your application tracker is stored only in your own browser's local storage — it never leaves your device unless you use the "Back Up" button to save your own copy.