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About CampusGuide

CampusGuide is a free college directory powered by open data. We help students and families research colleges using data from IPEDS, College Scorecard, NOAA, and other public sources.

Every stat on the site traces to a public data source. No paid placements, no pay-for-play reviews. Our rankings use a transparent four-factor formula built only from federal data, and the written summaries on school pages are generated from that same data — our methodology explains exactly how.

Our Data Sources

  • IPEDS / NCES — institutional characteristics, enrollment, graduation rates, degree programs
  • College Scorecard — tuition, admissions, financial aid, post-graduation earnings
  • NOAA / NWS — campus climate data
  • Clery Act / Campus Safety — campus crime statistics
  • Wikidata — founding dates, mascots, and school colors (community-maintained, not a government source)

Why CampusGuide

Most college comparison sites mix objective data with paid placements and opaque scores. CampusGuide takes a different approach: our rankings and summaries are computed only from public data — nothing is paid for, and nothing is hand-picked.

If a data point appears on our site, you can trace it back to a publicly available government dataset. If we do not have data for a particular metric, we leave it out rather than estimate or editorialize.