Why I built EducationGuide

In 1986 my family moved from rural Missouri to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I spent my first two years of high school there trying to fit in. My grades showed it. By the time I got my act together, the second half of high school went well: strong grades, a good SAT, and more activities than I can count. I was president of FBLA and vice president of the drama club, played guitar in the jazz band, played soccer, edited photos for the newspaper and yearbook, and started my own newspaper, all while working.

What I didn't have was any idea what I wanted to do for a living. My college applications were a shotgun approach with no real logic behind them, and I got very little guidance. My guidance counselor told me I would never get into Cal Poly. That's where I went.

At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo I kept busy: another play, a newspaper I co-founded, the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity I founded, and running the physics department's astronomy observatory lab. I started in speech communication and kept knocking on other departments' doors, trying to find where I belonged. I took several career assessments. Their top matches were college professor or librarian, and advertising or marketing executive. I thought the marketing idea was terrible. I was misinformed: it's the path I took, and it suited me well. To graduate in four years I settled on social science with a pre-law concentration, one requirement short of a business minor, and I stayed frustrated that I hadn't started with a clearer path.

My first company, Potrero Media, started in education. I taught myself HTML and built more than 25 websites about careers and training, from culinary and photography schools to medical assistant programs and online degrees, helping students find specialty schools and online programs. I learned how people actually search for this information, and our sites ranked at the top for many of the searches we targeted. I sold that education business in 2005 and moved on to financial services. Along the way I picked up the EducationGuide.com domain in case I ever wanted to build something like this again.

And now, decades later, the same problem is still there, except this time my own children are going through it. We live in Florida, and while there are many amazing options, students here still have to choose schools, majors and careers with little reliable, unbiased help. Much of what's online is built to sell them a program. So I'm building the guide I wish I'd had: free, independent, built on public data, and honest about what the data can and can't tell you. It has been a lifelong journey, and I'm having a blast doing it.

-- Rick Natsch, founder

What we will and won't do

• No paid placement. No college pays to appear, to be picked or to be ranked.
• Data first. Every figure comes from a named public source with its year; we show our method and correct mistakes publicly.
• Your information stays yours. We never sell it, and we never call or text you for marketing.
• Built to be useful to you and your AI. Our data is free to download and reuse with attribution.

EducationGuide is operated by Amerigo Health LLC and is currently self-funded. Editorial standards · How we score · Corrections · rick@educationguide.com