by our College Data Analytics TeamThe goal of the College Factual Best Colleges Ranking is to measure the educational quality a student will receive at a specific college, relative to all the other colleges in the United States.
Helping students make better decisions with their money is our number one priority. The following are the beliefs that lie at the root of our ranking philosophy.
Objective: Unbiased and driven by hard data, not subjective surveys.
Bottoms-Up: A school is a collection of many individual programs that can vary widely in quality. We assess each specific major and degree level offering at a school individually and then aggregate those scores up to assess the school as a whole.
Outcome-Focused: Schools must prepare students for success.
Customizable: One size does NOT fit all and so we offer many ways for a student to identify the best fit for them.
Our team of data scientists uses open government data at the major + degree level combined with school-wide indicators to assess each specific program a school offers and rank them accordingly.
We then aggregate those details rankings up, weighted by the number of students, to get broader assessments of a school overall. In this way, or a school to be given a good ‘overall’ Best Colleges Ranking it must be excellent at whatever it chooses to focus on.
Our Best Colleges Ranking is made up of 6 high-level scores, each of which incorporates many factors that make up that score. Below is an overview of each of those scores and its general level of impact on the final ranking.
| Indicator | Description | Factor Highlights | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accreditation Score | Has the school been successfully vetted by independent, trusted accreditors? | Regional, National & Program Specific Accreditations | High |
| Employment Score | Are graduates of this school in demand by the worforce? | Post-Graduation Employment Rate & Earnings | High |
| Demand Score | Is this school in-demand by the market (students)? | Matriculation Rate, Completions | Medium |
| Education Score | Does the school invest in its program and have the educational outcomes to show for it? | Graduation Rate, Student/Faculty Ratio, Faculty Pay, Educational Investments & Focus | Medium |
| Peer Score | Will your fellow students be an asset to your education? | Test Scores, Student Diversity | Low |
| Debt Score | Will this school leave you with more debt than you can pay back? | Student Loan Debt, Default Rate, Repayment Rate | Low |
The core of our college data comes from The Institute of Education Sciences (IES). This branch of the United States Department of Education (DOE) is the nation’s premier source for research, evaluation, and statistics that helps educators, policymakers, and stakeholders improve outcomes for all students. The college data comes specifically from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the IES.
Our list of majors are based on the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) from the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) branch of the United States Department of Education (DOE). The CIP is a taxonomy of instructional programs that provides a classification system for the thousands of different programs offered by postsecondary institutions. Its purpose is to facilitate the organization, collection, and reporting of fields of study and program completions.
For more details, please see our Data Sources & References section.
