Looking for more decision-making tools? Try College Scorecard, the Department of Education’s website designed to help students and families compare the cost and value of different colleges. College Scorecard provides institution-level and field-of-study-level data on everything from admissions rates to post-graduation salaries to status of student loan repayment.
How might you use it? Suppose your student is debating between a more expensive college that’s likely a better fit than its less expensive counterpart. You might learn from the data that median salaries for her field of study at the more expensive school are 1/3 higher than those at the less expensive school. Or you might find outcomes that are similar, or worse at the higher priced school.
College Scorecard also includes average net price by income level– helpful for determining whether your aid award is good or not; graduation rates; student body demographics and more. Within the Financial Aid & Debt section, College Scorecard shows the repayment rate of student loans two years after the student enters repayment, breaking it down by Making Progress, Paid Off, Deferment, or Not Making Progress. (The last category can mean a number of things, including that the graduate is in graduate school and thus their undergraduate loans are deferred.)