Know the source. Understand the number.
College research should make uncertainty visible. Our October 19, 2026 release contains a fixed roster of 201 institutions, with field-specific sources and reporting periods.
What is covered
179 institutions have partial source-reviewed Common Data Set research. None is certified fully verified across CDS sections A–J. The other 22 have historical IPEDS observations delivered via the Urban Institute Education Data Portal, with no accepted CDS observations. Federal directory, cost, aid, enrollment, and historical completion records supplement the exact 201 UNITIDs. This curated list is not a ranking.
How a statistic reaches a profile
Our offline preparation pipeline checks all four research archive hashes and file manifests. The six authoritative CDS JSONL tables are imported once; duplicate CSV exports and research staging files are excluded. Display selections are checked against source observations, field verification, populations, cohorts, calculations, and unresolved source issues. Conflicting observations remain separate in the offline evidence layer. An unavailable value stays unavailable.
Years and student populations matter
A CDS report can contain different years for admission outcomes, aid, and tuition. A download date does not make those figures current. Federal net price concerns first-time, full-time Title IV aid recipients; public-college net price also limits the population to in-state students. An average grant is neither average net price nor an individual aid offer. We retain source population and reporting periods beside the numbers.
2026–27 cost of attendance
Published 2026–27 attendance budgets come from an independently audited review of each school’s official financial-aid pages, completed October 22, 2026. Only budgets the audit accepted are shown: 629 budgets for 188 of the original 201 colleges, 154 of them with a complete published total. For 13 colleges no budget is shown because the year could not be confirmed, the school’s figures conflicted, the budget could not be re-checked, or only an earlier year was available. Ranges stay ranges, school estimates are labeled, and a partial figure such as tuition and fees is never presented as a full budget. This audited layer covers only the original 201 colleges, not the wider nationwide directory.
A published cost of attendance is the school’s budget before aid. It is different from the federal average net price, which is a historical average after grants for a specific group of students, and from your own aid offer.
Admissions and application policies
Admission rates cannot predict an individual applicant’s probability. Score percentiles describe enrolled submitters, not requirements or averages. GPA methods differ and are not automatically unweighted. Early application pools differ. Only policy observations explicitly supporting applications in 2026–27 pass the public policy gate. Dates without verified years and standing policies without a verified cycle remain withheld. Check official instructions and program conditions before submitting an application.
Programs and outcomes
Historical IPEDS completion counts use CIP taxonomy labels, not a verified current majors catalog. We do not publish institution-level four-year earnings while federal errata remain unresolved. Program outcomes are retained offline with disclosure suppression and OPEID/CIP/credential group scope; a repeated group value is not an independent campus result.
Attribution and refreshes
Federal records come from U.S. Department of Education NCES/IPEDS and College Scorecard releases. Alternative observations are provided via Urban Institute under ODC-By; attribution appears on every college-data page. We link to official sources rather than redistributing raw institutional PDFs or commercial rankings. Updates require a new version, source validation, and review of changed selections. Website builds use checked-in static outputs and make no live research requests.