Editorial standards

Every figure comes from a named public source and is labeled with the year it describes: the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard, IPEDS), the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and other federal agencies, and state university systems and agencies for admissions data. The full list, with the edition we use and when the next one is due, is public at sources.json and on our disclosures page.

We combine sources that aren't published together (for example, what a family at your income pays alongside what graduates in your major earn), calculate measures from them, and explain each method on How we score. We don't estimate missing figures: missing data is shown as missing.

Automated checks run on every update: every published page is compared with the numbers our reports and admission-chances tool use, and each label is recomputed independently from the figures a school's page shows. When a source contains an obvious error (a value off its scale, percentiles in reverse order), we correct or drop it and say so where the data appears.

We check every source for new editions weekly and add a new year rather than overwriting the old one, so changes over time stay visible. Each page shows the source and year of its figures.

We use AI tools to help build and check the site. AI does not invent figures: every number comes from a cited source. Written summaries are generated from our data and reviewed by a person before they are published.

No college, lender or program pays to appear, to be picked or to be ranked, and we don't sell visitors' information. If that ever changes, it will be labeled clearly on every page where it applies.

If something looks wrong, email rick@educationguide.com. We fix confirmed errors promptly and list significant ones on our corrections page.