How reliable is CollegeData?

Paying for College
1

<p>When I look at that website CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application it paints a pretty good picture of the amount of financial aid that is provided to students. But when I come to this site and read some of the stories I don't get the same impression.</p>

<p>For example Wake Forest in North Carolina.</p>

<p>Listed tuition is $38,622
Found to Have Financial Need 344 (80.0%) of applicants
Received Financial Aid 338 (98.3%) of applicants with financial need
Need Fully Met 295 (87.3%) of aid recipients
Average Percent of Need Met 99%
Average Award $28,753
Need-Based Gift Received by 320 (94.7%) of aid recipients, average amount $23,682
Need-Based Self-Help Received by 270 (79.9%) of aid recipients, average amount $9,256
Merit-Based Gift Received by 226 (66.9%) of aid recipients
Merit-Based Gift Received by 78 (6.5%) of freshmen without need, average amount $14,742 </p>

<p>So they seem pretty generous.</p>

2

<p>Well, those statistics are reported by the colleges themselves, and no one ever checks up on them! So aid statistics, admissions statistics etc. should be taken with a huge grain of salt. There is no “college police” so to speak to actually see if their reported stats are true!</p>

3

<p>The data on CollegeData can be a year or two behind. Often times the most recent data is found in the school’s common data set. Here is a link to WFU’s most recent CDS.
<a href=“Home - Office of Institutional Research”>Home - Office of Institutional Research;

<p>The financial aid info is in section H, H2a-n specifically.</p>

4

<p>Wake Forest has about 1100-1200 freshmen.</p>

<p>Only 380 were found to have need - at a school that costs $50,000+? Pretty amazing. Only about 40% even applied for financial aid - this would indicate to me that this school does not have a need-blind admission policy, in a major way. (I assume by “applicant” they mean “applied for financial aid”, not “applied for admittance”, otherwise these numbers make no sense.)</p>

<p>80% of those getting FA got an average of $9300 in self-help. This is loans and work-study, right? If it’s all loans then you will graduate $35,000-40,000 in debt, on average.</p>

<p>They report “average percent of need met” at 99%, but yet only 87% had their “need fully met”. These numbers don’t align to me, plus it means 13% of students were gapped.</p>

<p>Only 7% of students without need received merit awards, that seems like a low number to me.</p>

<p>Is this a “good” picture? Doesn’t seem like anything extraordinary to me. Maybe I am misinterpreting these numbers though.</p>

5

<p>This is fantastic input. I certainly agree that WFU spreads a great amount of financial aid (i.e they reduce the college sticker price) to a relatively small number of students.</p>

<p>And thanks for the input that the data in CollegeDate can be dated.</p>