A place to make sense of an overwhelming process.
SchoolScout started with a spreadsheet that kept getting messier by the week. There was so much information to consume and so many things we didn’t fully understand. We were trying to figure out where our son should apply, and it turned into dozens of browser tabs, conflicting PDFs, and a running list of “wait, what does that actually mean?” questions that we didn’t have time to answer; what’s the difference between early decision and early action, what does it mean financially? Reach schools, match schools, safety schools, aid estimates, deadlines, visits — it all seemed to change depending on which page you were reading.
We built SchoolScout to be the thing we wished we’d had: one place to keep a list, get a straight answer about a school, and ask the confusing questions without needing to become an admissions expert first. It’s still evolving, but the goal hasn’t — make the overwhelming, complicated process of finding the right colleges, researching them, comparing them, visiting them etc. simple, intuitive, collaborative and manageable.
School statistics come from the US Department of Education’s College Scorecard and IPEDS, refreshed monthly. Where each school’s admissions and financial aid offices publish comes from the IPEDS directory, refreshed each year. Which schools accept the Common Application comes from Common App’s own directory. Every source we point families to is listed on Resources.
Directory data goes out of date. Schools rename, merge and move their web pages, and the federal directory is updated once a year, so an address can be out of date before the next edition. We load each new edition as it is published, and anything we could not confirm is left blank instead of filled in with a guess.
Two things we work out ourselves, because no single feed publishes them. Costs are read from each school’s own published cost page, so the figure is the one the school prints for the coming year rather than the federal figure, which can trail it by two years. Research activity — R1, R2 and Research College or University — is worked out from NSF research spending and IPEDS doctorate data, against published thresholds, because the classification carried in the federal feed is several years out of date. Wherever you see one of these, an beside the figure names its source and the year it covers.
A research designation measures how much research a school does. It is not a ranking, and a school without one is not a lesser school — most colleges award no research doctorates, which is simply a different kind of institution.
SchoolScout uses generative AI, grounded in the data sources above, to help you research and compare schools. Like any AI tool, it can make mistakes — always verify costs, deadlines, and requirements directly with the school before making decisions.
SchoolScout securely stores the account information you provide (name and email), the profile and plan data you build in the app, and a record of feature usage for billing purposes. Passwords are hashed and never stored in plain text.
Payments are processed by Stripe. SchoolScout never sees or stores your card details.
The family is our only customer: no college, lender or recruiter pays us. Read who pays for SchoolScout, and what we never do with your data.