The tour drives the real page with live data, so what you see is exactly what you get. Click the picture or press Space to pause; ← → step back and forward. The tour puts your own saved choices back when it finishes or you leave. Open the real page.
📝 Written guide
Every step of the tour as text, to read or print.
❓ Common questions
Why a dash is not a zero, why a school seems to be missing, and more.
Why do some schools show “—”? Small programs have too few graduates for the government to publish their pay. A dash means “not published”, never zero.
Why does a college seem to be missing a major? Colleges file the same subject under different codes (UT Austin files Computer Science as “Computer and Information Sciences, General”). On College Finder the card shows those related programs; on Majors, try a neighbouring major or use Every major at one school.
What do “pay after 4 years” and “net price” mean? Pay is the median yearly earnings of the program’s graduates who received federal aid, four years after finishing. Net price is what a full-time first-year student with grant aid paid for a year after grants and scholarships, for the college as a whole.
What does a year of college cost? In the Admissions, cost & degree plan box: the college’s own figures for tuition, fees, books and supplies, room and board and other costs, added up for living on campus, off campus or at home, in-state and out-of-state - plus what families at each income level actually paid, and a link to the college’s net price calculator.
Why is the first load of “All states” slow? Thousands of schools are fetched once and then saved for a week; after that it is quick.
How do I move or resize a box? Point at it: a small toolbar appears in the middle of its top edge. Drag ⠿ to move the box (drop it on the left or right edge of another box to put the two side by side, or on the top or bottom half to stack it). Drag the bottom-right corner to resize; double-click that corner for its natural height. ⇔ steps through widths. With a keyboard, Tab to ⠿ and use the arrow keys. On a phone the boxes stack in one column, but you can still reorder them.
Can I hide a box? Yes: every box below the key numbers starts open, two to a row. Click its title bar to collapse it to one line, and again to open it. Collapse all and Expand all above the boxes do every box at once.
How do I put the page back the way it was? ↺ on a box resets that box; ↺ Reset layout above the boxes resets everything. Your layout is saved in this browser only.
Where do the admission requirements come from? The federal IPEDS admissions survey, which every college taking federal student aid answers each year: whether it requires, recommends or just considers GPA, class rank, test scores, essays and more, plus the SAT/ACT ranges of admitted students and how many applied and got in. It covers the college as a whole; programs like nursing or engineering may ask for more.
Which colleges have course-by-course degree plans? A pilot of four: Texas A&M, UT Austin, Texas State and Sam Houston State. No national source lists the courses a degree needs, so these are read from each school’s own online catalog (refreshed weekly here). Always confirm with the catalog and an advisor.
Where does it come from? The U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard (pay, programs, costs and net price), IPEDS via the Urban Institute (admissions, tuition vs fees), and the four schools’ online catalogs (degree plans).