How accurate is collegedata.com?

I’ve been relying on this free website to provide me with raw numbers in a very organized fashion. However, the website never cites the year the data comes from, and the webmaster has been keeping the website screen ratio to desktops, so I’m not sure if the statistics and the information are up-to-date. Can someone with experience with this website tell me more about it? Thanks!

bump

I’m not exactly sure, but know that you can always google an individual school’s Common Data Set to get the same info. Most colleges have their 2017-18 common data set posted on their websites.

The categories and numbers look pretty much like a subset of the common data set, though there may be update lag.

College Data is updated annually, and is accurate to the extent that the colleges themselves provide the info. Colleges are mandated to report the data annually, so it would be exceptional for the data to be particularly out of date. The bumpfier stuff (such as student organizations) might not be updated as assiduously, but by and large you can count on it being pretty current & pretty accurate.

However, there are occasional instances of data entry errors in common data sets and collegedata.com .

You are better off googling the common data set for the school that interests you.

Also, College Navigator is the government site for the same data. The data is reported to the government, so why access it through a middleman?

Common data set will show some details that aren’t in the aggregations. This thread gives ideas of what to look for: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2076560-what-to-look-in-common-data-set-p1.html

College Navigator shows slightly different data (or data differently organized) from common data sets.

Note that Common Data Sets for Class of 2022 admissions info (first class with entirely New SAT scores) will not be available until the winter on college websites and not until June 2019 at NCES. If you are looking for SAT scores specifically and/or the absolute most up-to-date data, look for your colleges to post a class profile for the Class of 2022 on their individual websites late this summer/early fall 2018. It is harder to compare class profiles because the data is not always apples-to-apples, but at least the data is more recent. If you are making a spreadsheet, consider adding both class profile columns and common data set columns.

My understanding is that both Common Data Sets and NCES show IPEDS data, i.e. it should be the same data even though the NCES display may be more limited. Also, there are some colleges that don’t post Common Data Sets but still provide the data to NCES. I find NCES to be most useful for apples-to-apples comparisons with the caveat that the data is old, with the most recent being Class of 2021, current rising college sophomores, from Common Data Set 2017-2018.

There are some instances where the CDS/CD (CDS = common data set, CD = collegedata.com) and CN (College Navigator) report differently. For example, the number of students in each major is reported in finer grain detail (with respect to majors) in CN than in CDS/CD. Admissions criteria like how important the college considers things like GPA, rank, test scores, rigor, essay, level of applicant’s interest, etc. is in CDS/CD but not CN. For financial aid, CN has more numbers, while CDS/CD lists how much the college claims to “meet need”.

Thanks all! I’m glad my question got answered and got more advice that would be extremely helpful! Kudos to all of you

CollegeData is fun for its Admissions Tracker feature. Type in the name of a school, select any of its options from the pull-down menu, and you’ll see the Tracker on your right.

Ten years’ worth of students have shared their results: where they applied, where they were accepted (or denied, or waitlisted), and what their basic stats were. Big name schools will sometimes have 50-100 results. Smaller schools, such as lesser-known LACs, might have a handful. It’s fun to see what sorts of people are “getting in” and what sorts are being denied.

True, it’s a small sample size, even for the 100 students who applied to, say, Yale, and obviously you can’t see things like letters of rec or personal essays (there is a section where students can list ECs, but most leave this part blank). Still, for a ballpark idea of how competitive admissions are, the Admissions Tracker feature can be sobering.