Big Future

Common Data Sets

I wish more high school students knew about the Common Data Set. The Common Data Set (CDS) is a form that many—though not all—colleges use to report information about the college. It’s where the College Board, US News, and Peterson’s all get their data about colleges. When you’re ready to do a “deep dive” to get to know a college, their CDS is one place where you look. How do you find a school’s CDS? Just Google “[name of college] common data set.” For example, here is a link to Austin College’s 2022-2023 CDS.

Most high school students looking for data are going straight to section C: “FIRST-TIME, FIRST-YEAR ADMISSION.” Find out exactly how many people applied to the college, how many were accepted, and how many enrolled. Find out if they have a waiting list, how many people were offered wait list spots, and how many of the people on the list were ultimately admitted. Wondering how many foreign language credits they require? How many science credits they recommend? You can find out in section C of the CDS. Does the school consider demonstrated interest? How about legacy status? or first-get status? They’ll tell you in the CDS. They’ll also tell you how important things like class rank and interviews are to them. You can find out what their SAT and ACT midranges were to compare your scores (if you have them). Pretty much any piece of information you would like to know about their admission process is in the CDS.

But if you only look at section C for admission data, there’s a lot you’ll miss that may be important to you.

Section B: ENROLLMENT AND PERSISTENCE. This section tells you how many students there are, broken down by gender, ethnicity, and type of degree. It will tell you what their graduation has has been over four, five, and six years.

Section E: ACADEMIC OFFERINGS AND POLICIES. Here’s where you find out if the college offers double majors, study abroad, internships, and student-designed majors, and other programs. It will also tell you if there are subjects where all students must take at least one class.

Section F: STUDENT LIFE. This section tells you what kinds of housing are available on campus (like coed housing, special housing for the disabled, theme housing), what percentage of students are in sororities or fraternities, what percentage of students live off campus, if the school offers ROTC, and what kinds of clubs and organizations are on campus.

Section G: ANNUAL EXPENSES. Tuition, fees, and living costs are found here. Notice there’s a place for schools to check if the costs are not the same for each year. For example, Austin College’s tuition and fees are $475 more for first-year students than returning students.

Section H: FINANCIAL AID. You can look through the financial aid section, and I encourage you to. But remember that it tells you nothing about the financial aid that you will receive. You only find that out once you apply and are accepted.

Section G: INSTRUCTIONAL FACULTY AND CLASS SIZE. Here you can find out how many faculty members they have, how many of them belong to minority groups, and how many of them have doctorate degrees. You can see what their overall student faculty ratio is, and see a sampling of class sizes.

Section J: DISCIPLINES. This section tells you what majors they offer, and what percentage of students graduate with degrees in the majors. So you can see what’s offered and also what’s popular.

That’s a lot of detailed information.

A few things to remember. Not all colleges participate in the Common Data Set , and not all of them answer each question. So while it’s very standardized, it’s not perfectly standardized. Also, different schools publish their CDS in different ways. Most have it as a downloadable PDF. Some a downloadable Excel file. And some have it formatted into their web site and not as a downloadable file at all. But you’ll still get plenty of information from any CDS you can find.

Combing through the CDS of every school you’re looking at might be too time-consuming. It’s fine to begin with each sites like BigFuture, Forbes, US News, and the Fiske Guide. But once you’re seriously considering a school—once it’s in your top 15 or 20—then you should take the time to look through the CDS. What all does the document tell you about the school? What questions does it leave unanswered? These are really important, and they’re (usually)waiting right there for you online.

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    What to think of college rankings

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The Glossary: gapping

The Glossary: gapping

Gapping is an informal financial aid term. It has to do with colleges offering less financial aid than they believe you need. After you fill out your FAFSA form (and possibly your CSS Profile), you will get a dollar amount called your E.F.C., or Expected Family Contribution. This is how much the government formula says your family should be expected to pay for college. The cost of a university, minus the EFC, is your need. If a university offers you less than your need in financial aid, then there is a gap. They’ve gapped you. You’ve been gapped. This is what gapping is all about.

Hey Google, where should I go to college?

About two weeks ago, Google announced they are severely enhancing their search tool to give you lots of information about colleges when you search for one. So if you do a Google search, for example, on SMU, then you’ll get several categories of data on SMU up at the top of the results page. They pull data from large government databses to get you all the relevant information—including average cost after finicial aid and where the school appears in a lot of different ranking systems. 

So what’s the big deal? Google gives you results search? Isn’t that what Google always does?

Partly, yes, it’s not a big deal that Google gives you information. But here’s what different: they give you a lot of easy-to-read information right at the top of your screen (it’s fully rolled out for your phone screen, and will eventually make it onto desktop as well). The information comes from reputable sources—it’s data, not advertising or opinion. And it’s all the same information for every four-year school in the U.S. 

So the first thing that comes to mind is that Google now competes with College Board’s Big Future and US News and World Reports. It’s a great, free resource for gathering information about schools. It’s professional and reliable. For this basic function, you might stop using Big Future. (If your school offers Naviance or College Greenlight, you may not use any of these. But my experience has taught me that those get ignored a lot by students.

There’s one major thing that Google’s enhanced search doesn’t seem to do that both Big Future and US News do, and that’s use a filter system where you can put in your test scores and preferences to get a list of possible matches. And if you sign up, both Big Future and US News will let you save your info and search results.

Also, at least so far, the “similar colleges” list doesn’t seem to be that great. I searched SMU, Southwestern University, and University of Texas at Dallas (because those are schools I’ve attended). For all, the listed similar colleges are just geographically close, not necessarily similar at all. I imagine as more people use Google it will track what they searach and imrpove the results on this. But it isn’t there yet. 

Another advantage that Google has over the other sites—which some people find creepy but others see as normal—is that Google is built on targeted advertising. So the more you search schools on Google and it figures out what you’re looking for, the more it can sell advertising to similar schools who will try to put their name up in front of you. It may take some time—even a few years—before it’s got enough data and establsihed advertisers to put all that together. But it could happen quick. If your internet is already good at seeimg to know what you want before you realize you want it, then soon this might be true of colleges, too. 

But please remember an important thing: if you’re interested in a colllege, you need to spend a lot of time on the school’s website. If they send you an email, click on the link! Google isn’t the only site that keeps track of their visitors. One of the primary ways that colleges gauge demonstrated interest is to track how much time you spend on their site and which pages you visit. So do some searching on Google...or Big Future...or US News. But remember that you might have a lot to gain from also searching the colleges’ sites as well.

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Full disclosre: I have several friends who work for Google. I haven’t discussed this with them, but I’m on vacation and will visit them this weekend. If they give me any additional info on the new college search, I’ll pass it along.