This is Roscommon raw again with lesson number 25. outcome based college selection. We need a way to cut through all the commercial clutter and select colleges based on how they're good for us. An interesting initiative in this regard was launched by the Obama administration. Everyone should be able to find clear, reliable open data on college affordability and value, like whether they're likely to graduate, find good jobs and pay off their laws. The US Department of Education College Scorecard allows you to analyze a college using these numbers important outcomes. It is the first ever comprehensive and reliable summary of data on post college earnings for students who attended all types of undergraduate institutions based upon information the government already has, such as tax records, student debt details and graduation rates.
For example, you can search for four year, mid sized colleges. Based on the highest compensation you're likely to get in a certain field, say biology, using filters such as average annual costs, graduation rates, and you can rank them on your own. The College Scorecard is extremely powerful for the following reasons. It does not artificially rank any school there are no indicators that are arbitrarily weighted. You look at the information and you can come to a conclusion based on your own analysis of what is important to you. The information is based massive amounts of real, reliable data that the government has and is not based on surveys.
The information is 100% free, there is nothing extra to buy using the College Scorecard. Let us search for 40 or midsize colleges. So first go to the College Scorecard. Choose your inputs and examine outputs of the search. Note that there are too many results here so you can narrow down using filters. Change the sort key on the right to salary after trending.
By moving the slide bars for each of the filters one can narrow or broaden the search in this particular Example. The scorecard reveals 17 results. clicking on view more details gives you all the initial information you need to know about that school. narrowing down your choices. Now that you have a good selection of colleges, you may want to conduct additional research about your basket of colleges from the comfort of your own home. The College Board suggests 10 things that you can do online.
On sites such as college week live, you can view college webcasts and even chat with admissions representatives to help narrow down your search. And when you finally gotten down the number of colleges to reasonable number, it is time to learn even more about your favorite colleges by doing that quintessential thing that American families during the summer, take a college road trip. Summary. Whether you choose an outcome based college selection to like the College Scorecard or not, there is no need to spend money on books or tools to research colleges. The goal is to develop a list of colleges that you are happy with places that will likely accept you when you apply. We will learn more about estimating your chances of admission in the next lesson.
If you have any questions or comments, please let us know. Thank you