<p>I was on the US News colleges website getting some basic info, and of course, they want you to pay $14.95 to get access to even more beneficial information. If you subscribed, was it beneficial?</p>
<p>Paid portion is pretty useless imo, had it last year. Just regular ranking, most of them with peer assessment instead of real data.</p>
<p>College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics</p>
<p>has everything the US News has for information, just no rankings. Searchable data and has crime stats and graduation per major stats. compare 6 colleges.</p>
<p>I paid for the premium ed at USN but the premium was helpful. $14 bucks is what three coffees at starbucks?</p>
<p>I thought it was a good value. Although I started here on CC, the info about merit money has already paid BIG dividends.</p>
<p>missypie-- Yes, I have found the premium version of the US News service to be helpful. I am probably in the power-user category however, as a parent helping my kids shop (as well as family friends), and as a regular CC poster on college stats.</p>
<p>The benefits I find with the US News service is that its fairly easy to navigate and I especially like the college comparisons features when considering a group of schools together, especially while developing an initial list and when honing down that list prior to applying. There are many stats and characteristics to consider, and US News has most of those that I find relevant to a college search, like info on economic and ethnic diversity, school size, graduation rates, and more. Yes, the aforementioned US government NCES/IPEDS web site has most of the same stuff, from the same time period, but the US News site is better structured to explore and compare IMO.</p>
<p>So, when in search & comparison mode, I like the US News premium the best of all single sites. I certainly use plenty of other sites & books to go from there to look at each school in more detail.</p>
<p>The other main tool I use are each school's "Common Data Sets." The CDS system is actually the backbone of US News' and IPED's base data set....BUT due to timing issues of each school reporting their CDS, the US News & IPEDs data is always a year old. (Many times, it doesn't mater too much that the data are a year old.) That is, the current version of US News preimum & IPEDS is based on data for the Class of 10...not 11. Schools that make public their CDS typically post them in the December to January timeframe, so they are usually a little late in the college search and application cycle to be of much help, but I have found it useful to check out the most current versions of a school's CDS when choosing between schools in the RD April decsion period. Plus, the CDS' have more info than whats reported by US News & IPEDS. The problem with going directly to a school's CDS is that (1) its not slicible & dicible to compare with other schools like US News, and (2) not every school posts their CDS publicly....notable secretive school examples include Harvard, Washington U, & Colgate....but most other selectives do post them, typically on their Institutional Research web pages.</p>
<p>Here's the CC thread which has links to many many CDS's:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/76444-links-common-data-sets-posted-colleges.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/76444-links-common-data-sets-posted-colleges.html</a>
...make sure you look at the compiled lists near the end of the thread as those links are most current. For someone who is not finely analyzing each colege's data,these CDS's are still very interesting, so I strongly suggest you try to find CDS's for your target schools.</p>
<p>One other type of info along the lines of the CDS's are school "factbooks." These annual reports are produced by a minority of schools, but are packed with info for the aspiring applicant. Here are a few examples:
<a href="http://www.bc.edu/publications/factbook/%5B/url%5D">http://www.bc.edu/publications/factbook/</a>
<a href="http://www.tufts.edu/ir/factBook.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.tufts.edu/ir/factBook.html</a>
<a href="http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/instres/%5B/url%5D">http://www.middlebury.edu/administration/instres/</a>
<a href="http://www.bowdoin.edu/ir/data/index.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.bowdoin.edu/ir/data/index.shtml</a></p>
<p>I tend to agree with the comment about the 3 cups of Starbucks coffee....thinking about the investment of a college education, which will end up costing or worth ~$200,000, this kind of investment is worthy of some serious research....read & study everything! Good luck.</p>
<p>For $14.95, I think USNewsOnline is a fantastic value, and the data is all current (or at least one year old). CollegeBoard, PR and the others typically have less current data.</p>
<p>I now buy Grande drip, so it's cups for me. :D</p>
<p>To the OP, yes, if you do agree with the criteria USNews used. But if you don't, you will just keep on scratching your head. :D</p>
<p>As a head's up: US News criteria are biased to public schools. </p>
<p>I personally think it would have been a lot better if USNews group schools in teirs. It would have been much helpful to the students.</p>
<p>Because CC doesn't allow links to competing sites, I have removed posts that referred to such sites. I also have removed posts that attempted to go around our censors to mention sites that either are competing sites or that CC doesn't allow to be mentioned because they have spammed our site with advertising.</p>
<p>I have found the paid part of the US News site to be very helpful. It gives detailed info about admissions and financial aid, for instance. While this info is available in the colleges' common data sets, many colleges don't post their common data sets or if they do post such info, it's difficult to find.</p>
<p>I also like being able to use the US News site to compare colleges.</p>
<p>comment on those "other" sites, albeit as a bias supporter & user of CC....IMHO opinion, if you've got (1) CC in general, (2) US News premium, (3) IPEDS, (4) CC links to school-specific CDS', (5) a factbook for those schools that provide them, and (6) a bunch of hard-copy guide books like Princeton Review and a handfull of others....you have everything you need....with little worry about spurious info (of course carefully evaluating the credibility of some posts).....I frankly don't need to check elsewhere.</p>