Since the CC one seems like it won’t be up as promised “in Spring”. Looking for DD#2, a rising senior hellbent on California, but I’m hoping to add at least 5 non-California schools to the mix. URM, 34 ACT, should be a commended scholar based on PSAT, 6 APs and 4 more this academic year. Hoping for good-sized (over 6k) school, with some merit aid or at least not crazy expensive, I’m full pay, but youngster is Pre-Med
I frankly haven’t seen any tool which is as effective as posting more information to this web site and seeing what responses you get (which of course need to be taken with a grain of salt, but will contain a lot of useful information along with a bit of other information).
These sites are pretty good for picking colleges
Collegeboard bigfuture
Us news world report (like going through rankings and stuff)
Princeton review
Unigo
This what I use mainly especially the first two.
Build initial list based on major, using Big Future. Filter based on size, geography, etc.
Then, for each school, click in “Paying” and “Financial Aid by the Numbers” to see if there is merit aid at all.
If there is, go to Collegedata and look under Money Matters to see the number of kids without financial need that got merit aid. If 30% of these kids got merit aid (for example), your chances for a merit award are great if your stats are in the top 30th percentile for the school.
It it’s a school I’ve never heard of, I also like to look at Niche to get some idea of how happy students are and if the school is respected for academics as well.