FANTASTIC new website for researching colleges

Parents Forum
21

<p>Like. Helpful. Thanks for FYI.</p>

22

<p>Unfortunately, as feared last year, the site has not improved. Old data is worthless.</p>

23

<p>This is a year and a half old.</p>

24

<p>There is no better tool than DIY College Rankings. It will cost you $40 or so, but all others pale in comparison. Michelle has entered all of the IPEDS data into an Excel spreadsheet. Every column is sortable and rankable. </p>

<p>For instance a search I did recently found all schools with less than 6600 undergrads (selected to keep Stanford in the list), more than 50 classes in engineering (selected to ensure breadth in engineering), freshman retention rate of 90% or more and a six year graduation rate of 80% or more, military schools excluded. Voila! A short list of 20 or so schools emerges.</p>

<p>There is no better tool. It’s updated yearly as new IPEDS data is released.</p>

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<p>^ I also found DIY College Rankings useful, and well worth the $40.</p>

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<p>There’s no need to pay the $40 for the DIY Rankings, you can create the same spreadsheet downloads right on the IPEDS website for free.</p>

27

<p>I really like this site…it has a ton. My teacher gave it to me (one of my AP teachers) [College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”>College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics)</p>

28

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<p>Yes and no.</p>

<p>The IPEDS search tool is not nearly as useful. </p>

<p>The data is all public. That’s where Michelle got it. Anyone else who’s Excel savy can do it for “free,” but it will cost WAY MORE than $40 in lost time to recreate DIY College Rankings.</p>

<p>If you’ve got nothing better to do with your time or Excel is your hobby, knock yourself out.</p>

29

<p>^ I totally agree with the above post. Yes, all of the information is available for free, but to me it was well worth $40 to have it already arranged into an Excel spreadsheet, with various sorting tools set up. I’m an engineer and actually pretty skilled with Excel, but the amount of time it would have taken me to setup that spreadsheet is huge.</p>