How The College Almanac works.

A free research site for families comparing U.S. colleges. It brings together public federal data on 4,035 degree-granting colleges (costs, admissions, outcomes, programs, athletics, safety and the surrounding area), plus tools to save colleges and plan applications, visits and costs.

It is run by Auriginal LLC. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or paid by any college, government agency, or ranking publisher. Colleges can't pay to appear or to be featured.

Rankings weight things in ways that may not match what matters to your family, and admission predictions can't account for how colleges actually read applications. Instead, the site shows the facts side by side and lets you sort and filter by what you care about, including admit rate, graduation rate and SAT or ACT ranges.

Mostly from the U.S. Department of Education: College Scorecard and IPEDS, which every college that takes federal student aid must report to. Other federal sources add research spending (NSF), campus safety (Clery Act reports), athletics (Equity in Athletics data) and the surrounding community (Census Bureau and others). The sources page lists every dataset and its year.

Colleges report to the federal government after each school year, and the data is checked before it's published, so the newest figures are usually one to two years behind. Every figure on the site is labelled with its year, for example “tuition 2024–25” or “SAT/ACT policy, fall 2024.” Policies can change since then, so confirm anything important on the college's own site.

Federal data doesn't include application plans (early decision, early action and so on) or their deadlines, and colleges change them every year. Rather than publish dates that may be out of date, the site lets you add your own: open a college in the application calendar, enter the deadline from its admissions site, and your calendar lists every college in date order.

No. “Average net price” is a federal average for first-time, full-time students who received aid. What your family pays depends on your finances and the aid each college offers. Use each college's official net price calculator, then add the numbers to the cost planner to compare colleges for one academic year and over four years.

They're what each college reported to the federal government for students entering in fall 2024. Required means scores are needed to be considered. Test optional means they're considered if you send them. Test blind means they aren't considered even if you send them. Some colleges have changed policy since, so check the admissions site for the current year.

Use the corrections page to record what's wrong and link the official source, then export the report and email it to contact@auriginal.app. Corrections are checked against the source before anything changes.

No. Tap the ribbon on any college to save it to My list. Your list, notes, plans and estimates stay in your own browser on this device. Nothing is uploaded, and there's nothing to sign up for.

Your list lives in that browser only, so clearing browser data removes it, and another phone or computer won't have it. On My list, use Export everything to save a backup file, then import it on the other device. Keep the file private: it contains your notes and plans.

Open My list and choose Build a printable report. Pick the colleges and sections you want, then print, or choose “Save as PDF” in the print dialog to share it with family or a counselor.

The site sets no cookies and uses no advertising or cross-site trackers. It counts visits with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which reports only totals and never sees what you save. The privacy notice has the details.