Newly Released College Scorecard Helps Students Choose Best College for Them
Promising to create a program to help protect families from crippling college debts, the Obama administration recently released its new “College Scorecard.”
This website allows families to compare college costs, and to make smart financial decisions about where to enroll for higher education.
In a nutshell, the College Scorecard is an online interactive tool that lets users sort and choose schools by a number of options – including location, size, campus setting, degree, and major programs. Each Scorecard includes five key pieces of data about a college: costs, graduation rate, loan default rate, average amount borrowed, and employment information such as how much graduates earn. In this way, families can determine if the cost of a particular school is worth it. What many families will find is that there is sometimes little connection between cost and student earning potential, and families who are considering large debt packages may realize they’d be better off choosing a lower priced college.
In Florida for example, if you compare a private school like University of Miami with a public school like University of Florida, you can see that the salary after attending is pretty close. However, the cost of attending UM is significantly higher than the cost of attending UF.
These data will be updated periodically, and the Department of Education plans to publish information on earnings potential in the coming year.
Students and parents can access a College Scorecard for every degree-granting institution starting at whitehouse.gov/scorecard, and they can email comments or questions about the tool to [email protected].
***Learn more about International College Counselors take on the College Scorecard, by watching Mandee Heller Adler’s recent interview on NBC.
About International College Counselors
The expert educational consultants at International College Counselors are dedicated to helping students and their families from across the country and all over the world find, apply to, and gain admission to the college of their dreams. If you would like to learn how to successfully navigate the college admissions process, please contact our expert college advisors at [email protected] or call 954-414-9986.