<p>College Results Online (CRO) is an interactive, user-friendly Web tool designed to provide policymakers, counselors, parents, students, and others with information about college graduation rates for nearly any four-year college or university in the country. CRO allows users to:</p>
<pre><code>Examine colleges' graduation rates, and see how those rates have changed over time.
Compare graduation rates of similar colleges serving similar students.
Learn about colleges' track records in graduating diverse groups of students."
</code></pre>
<p>It also allows easy comparisons between multiple colleges with spreadsheets that show average SAT scores, tuition costs, % freshman retention rate, graduation rates for 4,5 and 6 years, number of UG students, racial makeup, % Pell students, average institutional grant aid, average cost for low income students, average loans at graduation, faculty to student ratio, % full time faculty, etc, etc, etc.
I sure wish this site was available 5 years ago!.</p>
<p>Education Trust is a solid outfit. Unfortunately, a quick review of the admission data for a few schools indicates several areas of concern as the numbers do not correspond to what is available from legitimate sources.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see if the reporting improves over time.</p>
<p>The site is not new. I remember seeing it as a recommendation in the revival of middle class black parents posters about a year ago. I have been using it with my junior caseload for about a year.</p>
<p>Xiggi is correct that there is a disconnect between the information on the site and the information found in IPEDS and the CDS. </p>
<p>So in teaching my students to do research, we use it as a jumping off point because you can use the similar school tab and compare up to 50 schools. I like that everything can be downloaded into excel, so that with a little copy/paste, you can have all of your information in one place. I also like the fact that you can look at graduation rates over time and by race and gender (to see if there are gaps in the graduation rates among different groups)</p>
<p>I have my students look at the following categories:</p>
<p>college characteristics
student characteristics
admissions
graduation by race and gender (what is the grad rate for people that you identify with)
grad rates over time
retention
financial aid</p>
<p>You can use the information to set up your spreadsheets, and use the information from IPEDS (financial aid data from 2009, admission data from 2010) and/or the CDS (as of 10/15/11) to fine tune your spreadsheets.</p>
<p>The finances (e.g. spending per student) information also seems interesting, but there are some oddities that can make one question the data, such as the very large difference in spending per student between Berkeley and UCLA. Perhaps financial numbers representing different things or methods of reporting are (perhaps unintentionally) being used for comparison?</p>
<p>I think the site is useful for early screening purposes. As prior posters have pointed out, the data is neither rich enough nor accurate enough to be the only reference one uses. I checked the data using a few colleges I’m very familiar with. There were a few glaring holes … (American University and SMU as similar schools???) … and the ordering of “comparable school data” is often misleading (kind of like using average student height to determine how tall the school’s basketball players are). But as a screening too I think it’s useful.</p>
<p>PS, I also believe the site would be most useful for students in states with a large diverse public university system. For a student trying to decide between in-state UKansas and OOS UCLA … not so much.</p>
<p>Yes, old data is an issue. But I have a bigger issue with the lack of explanation. American University is listed as being “similar” to Southern Methodist University. Similar how? By size? By region? But social environment? My D attended UDelaware, where half the student body is OOS. Admission requirements are much higher for OOS than in-state applicants. And yet the data provided is an average of the two groups. Reading the data literally might lead in-state students to believe they won’t be admitted … and OOS students to believe the school would be a safety.</p>
<p>Table 1: Public and Private not-for-profit Sector Weights
Estimated Median SAT or ACT equivalent of freshman class 402 points
Sector (Public vs. Private) 101 points
Percent of FTE undergraduate students age 25 and over 92 points
Admissions Selectivity, per Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges 97 points
Percent of Full-time, First-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students who received federal grants 61 points
Status as a commuter campus 74 points
Number of full-time equivalent undergraduates 44 points
The percent of degrees awarded in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics 44 points
Carnegie Classification 45 points
Percent of undergraduates who are enrolled part-time 41 points</p>