With the cost of college rising and parents looking for a college that doesn’t cause their students to fall into debt after graduation, where do you go to find the data you need? Where do you find a college with the best bang for your college buck?
CollegeMeasures.org
This site describes itself as “committed to informing and improving the decision-making process for students, parents, and policy makers. By making available key data through websites like our 2-year and 4-year college data tools, we enable users to make smarter decisions, and in doing so help create a more efficient, productive and effective higher education system.” And it certainly delivers.
Upon further investigation, parents can gather data for both 2-year and 4-year colleges. Once you access the data tabs, you can view performance by college, by state, by rank and nationally. The comparison tools are excellent and easy to use. When you choose to examine by college, you can view the college’s performance scorecard listing several different criteria: strategic measures, graduation rate, retention rate, cost per student, cost per degree, cost of attrition, student loan default rates, and my favorite debt to earnings ratio.
With the debt to earnings ratio you can determine if the cost of degree is worth the investment based on earnings after graduation.
COLLEGEdata.com
COLLEGEdata.com tags itself as the online college advisor; and the site certainly lives up to its name. The site offers the following college helps categories:
- Scholarship Finder
- Admissions Tracker
- Net Price Calculator
- EFC Calculator
- College Match
- College Chances
Not only is the site a clearinghouse for college data, using it helps parents find the most generous colleges by using the college match tool. This tool allows you to choose colleges under the “Financial Friendliness” category and see statistics for the financial need met (0-100%); and merit aid scholarship percentages, giving you the option to include only students with financial need. This information will help you make information financial choices about the money you spend on the education.
As with all college search tools, you can filter the information by state, gender, major, graduation rates, freshman satisfaction, entrance difficulty, and on this one, sports offered. If you need to find a college in your state or region, that meets a substantial amount of need, this is the tool to use.
These two tools can help you weigh the financial investment you will make towards your college-bound teen’s education. With college costs skyrocketing, it’s becoming more and more critical to help their student graduate debt free.