I am trying to help my nephew narrow down his college options. I learned about Common Data Sets on CC years ago and have found them to be an invaluable resource. I have noticed however that while most colleges make their CDS readily available on their web site, others tuck them away within their web site, requiring a lot of digging and some colleges just don’t seem to make them available at all. Should I assume that posting a CDS is optional to a college? If an individual college chooses not to make that available, should I read anything negative into that? Thanks!
It is, unfortunately, optional. U of Chicago, for example, does not post theirs. Easiest to find the ones that do by Googling " common data set".
Thank you. I wonder why a college would not make their CDS available. The colleges that I have had difficulty finding were lower ranked regional universities and a couple LAC’s, so I assumed they did not want to post what they might consider a disappointing CDC. However that theory is blown if a school the caliber of U of Chicago does not make their available either, I wonder the motivation?
You might be able to get a lot of the information that you are looking for here:
I wouldn’t read anything negative into non-publication (except I disagree with it). You can get some of the same data from http://www.collegedata.com/ and http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
What exactly are you trying to find out?
You might try this. http://collegelists.pbworks.com/w/page/30192726/Common%20Data%20Sets
Link for UChicago doesn’t work. Neither does American’s, Barnard’s and some others. Still it’s a place to start.
@thumper1: Pretty much everything from retention rate, detailed class size breakdowns, faculty-student ratio, most popular majors, the GPA and test score ranges for applicants, diversity breakdown, FA breakdown, etc. They colleges often provide a “snapshot” or “profile” of the prior years class, but that information is generally cherry picked and consists of averages. I like the warts and all aspect of a CDS. They have been an invaluable tool in the college selection process with my 3 kids.
I have always assumed that U of Chicago doesn’t want their warts inspected…
I always assumed that colleges that like to publish unusually strong SAT scores do not want to reveal that they are often doing so at the expense of GPAs. Releasing the CDS would uncover that fact.
The Common Data Set was set up by publishers to try to standardize the information gathered from Institutions http://www.commondataset.org/
There’s no “requirement” for them to make the Common Data Set available to the public, but many colleges do.
List of CDS on College Confidential http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/76444-links-to-the-common-data-sets-posted-by-colleges.html#latest