When parents research colleges, the first thing they usually encounter is a ranking, and most rankings draw their underlying data from the same source: the federal government’s postsecondary data collection system. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has turned that data into a public search tool, College Navigator, which anyone can use free of charge.

What It Covers

According to the NCES website, College Navigator provides the following data for each institution:

  • Admissions: SAT and ACT score ranges and admission rates
  • Tuition and costs: searchable by criteria
  • Enrollment: the size of the undergraduate student body
  • Programs: the majors offered and distance education options
  • Institution characteristics: type of location, campus setting, housing and religious affiliation
  • Athletics: varsity sports listed by gender
  • Special types: historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges, single-sex institutions and others

The tool also lets users add several schools to a favorites list for side-by-side comparison and export search results as a spreadsheet. These two features are its most practical advantage over rankings: parents can build a list around the measures they care about instead of accepting an order set by someone else.

How It Differs from Rankings

Rankings provide a conclusion; College Navigator provides the raw measures. A ranking combines a dozen or more measures into a single position, using weights chosen by the publisher, and those weights do not necessarily match what a given family cares about. College Navigator does not combine anything; it only presents the data.

The data is reported by the institutions under federal requirements. The definitions are therefore consistent and comparable across schools, which rankings cannot offer.

There are no subjective assessments. Judgments about teaching quality or campus culture are not included and must come from campus visits, conversations with current students and materials each school publishes.

How to Use the Data

There are three practical uses:

Check retention and graduation rates. The first-year retention rate shows whether students stay after enrolling, and the six-year graduation rate shows whether they complete their degrees. Both are often overlooked when building a college list, yet they say more than the admission rate about how well a school fits its students.

Check the full cost of attendance. The cost figures on each page include tuition, fees, housing and other expenses, which can lead to a very different conclusion than looking at tuition alone.

Check whether a major is actually offered. Some schools offer only one or two courses in a given field without a complete major. Checking the program list item by item is more reliable than reading a school’s promotional pages.

Data to Use Alongside It

The high school counterpart is the University of California Infocenter data on admissions by source school; see UC Admissions by High School: How to Use the Infocenter. Used together, the two tools show both where students from a given high school went and what those colleges are like. EDUBUS profiles of U.S. universities are in the school directory, and application planning is covered in College Admissions Planning.

Sources

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