How we verify

From each college’s own pages

Application deadlines, AP credit policies, links to scholarship pages and campus programs come from the college’s own website. We save the page, record its address and the date we fetched it, and show that source next to the fact. Where we quote a college, the words are copied exactly from the saved page. No model is involved in fetching a page.

From official public datasets

Net price, graduation and retention rates, earnings, enrollment and majors come from the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard and IPEDS). Setting and metro area come from the federal locale classification and Census metro estimates. Climate comes from NOAA normals, rents from HUD fair market rents, and walkability from the EPA. Nursing pass rates come from state boards of nursing. These carry the date of our data snapshot.

From the Common Data Set

Where a college publishes a Common Data Set, we link to it, and facts such as Greek-life participation show the Common Data Set year.

Our rules

• Every fact shows its source and the date we checked it.
• When a source gives one number, we show that number, not a range.
• When we do not hold a fact, the section is left out. We do not guess or fill in.
• Distances are straight-line and computed in your browser from the ZIP code you type. The ZIP stays on your device.

Found a mistake?

Each source link goes to the page we used, so you can compare. Corrections are welcome once the site launches.