We are parents who have gone through the college search twice, four years apart. One of us earned a bachelor's and a master's degree at our state's flagship public university, then a second master's and a PhD in the Ivy League. The other earned a bachelor's degree in the Ivy League and a law degree at a public university.
We expected the process to feel familiar. Instead, we found it confusing and often dependent on guesswork.
As a researcher and an attorney, we are both inclined to examine details and verify claims before accepting them. We brought that approach to the college search.
Each time we went through the process, we wished for tools that didn't exist, so Brenda built them. Along the way we also made worksheets for the conversations that are hard to have at the kitchen table: what matters most to us, how to compare schools fairly, and how to make sense of a campus visit.
They helped us, and we'd like them to help other families too. That's all this site is: the things we wish we'd had, shared with other parents.
Honest numbers. The school figures come from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard, and the school-by-school extracurricular ratings come from each school's own Common Data Set. We explain where everything comes from, and what it can't tell you, on the About This Data page.
Your information stays with you. There are no accounts to create. What you put in your application tracker is saved only in your own browser, not on our servers.
Plain language. We try to explain things the way we'd explain them to a friend, without jargon, and we try to say so when an estimate is just an estimate.
We're parents who built some tools, not admissions officers or a counseling service. We can't tell you where a student will be admitted, and no website can. The chance estimates here are rough guides based on public numbers, and real admissions decisions depend on much more than we can see. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by any college or university.
What we can do is help you ask better questions, build a list you feel good about, and keep the process a little less overwhelming.