<p>In case you were not aware of it, the US Department of Education now has a basic college search and information website College Opportunities On-line (COOL). It will do a very basic college search. The best thing is you can type in a college and get some useful information such as:
math and verbal SAT 25th and 75th percentile
ACT 25th amd 75th (there are SAT-ACT conversion tables elsewhere on the web)
percent of students receiving grants and scholarships from the insitution and the average amount
graduation rates overall and by gender and ethnicity
various enrollment statistics
how to get info about campus crime
and more</p>
<p>just a word about the graduation rates...IPEDS uses a 6-year time frame for every college which penalizes schools heavy with engineering enrollment and/or co-op programs because a larger percentage take a longer to graduate.</p>
<p>Here is a table from the COOL website of % of students receiving a grant or scholarship from the college (not state, local, federal, or private source) and the average grant and the total cost. It looks like Harvard costs less than Wartburg College for the students who receive some grant money. There seem to be two pricing structures: give a lot of grant money to half the students versus give half as much grant money to twice as many students. Grove City marches to the beat of a different drummer. Is this data valid for the large publics? Is the average grant based only on out-of-state for the publics? If it is valid, how do the large publics attract out-of-state students at that price? I think a lot of students avoid private schools because they mistakenly think private schools are more expensive than they really are. They are frightened by the sticker price. There is a lot of ignorance about financial aid. Why don't private colleges publish the average actual cost after grant money and work study?</p>
<p>College % ave total
grant grant cost</p>
<hr>
<p>Harvard 48 19584 30620
Yale 40 19657 29820
Princeton 51 17842 29910
Dartmouth46 20376 30465
Cornell 44 14065 30167
Columbia 40 19331 31472
U Penn 39 18237 30716
Brown 40 19369 30672
Stanford 49 17167 29847</p>
<p>Collegehelp, you must not have noticed but you can adjust the IPEDS info for four year grad rates. I agree with Ohnoes, the information on number of graduating seniors in a particular major is particularly interesting, as are the financial aid numbers.</p>