How College Finder works

Requirements and preferences

Each selected group is either required or preferred: location, institution type, program conditions and reported price. A known required failure excludes the college. Missing required evidence puts it in “Needs confirmation.” Neither can be compensated by a high preference index.

A preference receives one equal share of the index. A supported preference contributes 1; a known mismatch or missing evidence contributes 0. Interest connections contribute the saved career-interest similarity divided by 100. The index is 100 × the sum of contributions ÷ the number of selected preferences. Evidence coverage reports the share of preferences with known evidence. Missing data is never removed from the denominator to inflate the index.

Without preferences there is no numeric index. Ties are ordered by evidence coverage, name and stable institution ID. Colleges with no known selected evidence remain in the confirmation group.

One real program must support the program conditions

Degree, subject, format and a selected career connection must be supported together by one active, recently verified degree listing at a public institution. A minor is not a bachelor degree. An online program in another subject cannot satisfy an online requirement for the selected subject. Missing listings are unknown evidence, not proof that the institution lacks the program.

StudyIndex subject mappings are labelled separately from university-reported codes. CIP and O*NET crosswalks are broad research connections; they do not establish licensing or accreditation. Optional interest preferences use your latest completed interest result, the versioned interest matcher and published program/career crosswalks.

Reported price comparisons

Tuition and required fees must have the same reporting period, annual basis, student level and residency category before they are added. Room, board, books, travel and personal expenses are not included in this subtotal. Average net price is a different measure and retains its aid/income group. Public resident averages cannot confirm an out-of-state price; largest-program prices are not treated as annual prices.

The latest available published period for each price type is fixed in the snapshot. Reported prices can be historical and are not a personal quote. Selecting a residency rate does not confirm your eligibility for that rate. NCES estimates are excluded unless you opt in. Source quality holds are respected; verified corrections take precedence. Unknown and unavailable figures are not converted to zero. Reported negative net prices remain labelled source values.

Private and reproducible

Each result stores its method, criteria, source fingerprint, explanations and source references. Budgets are submitted in the form body, not in a URL. A private history link requires the owning account or browser session; knowing its ID is insufficient. Repeat submissions with the same evidence on the same UTC day reuse a snapshot.

Anonymous College Finder snapshots expire after 30 days. This browser’s available history is linked to your account automatically when you sign in. Account export includes the history; deleting an account deletes its snapshots. Historical entries are kept as history when data changes, with current inactive links removed. Use “Edit preferences & update” to evaluate the current directory again.