For parents & families
What we verify, what we estimate, and what we don't know.
If you are helping a student decide, the useful question is not which school is 'best' — it is which numbers on the screen are real. This page separates the fields we display from public datasets, the figures we openly estimate, and the things no directory can tell you. Nothing here is a ranking, a recommendation, or a score we invented.
11,030 institutions listed. Where a figure has no verified source we show N/A rather than filling the gap with a guess.
Signal 01
How legitimacy actually gets checked: accreditation.
Every institution page shows an accreditation field. Accreditation is a review by an external body of whether a school meets agreed academic and administrative standards — it is the closest thing to a baseline legitimacy signal that exists in higher education.
Accreditation matters for practical, non-abstract reasons: it usually determines whether credits transfer to another institution, whether a degree is recognised by employers and licensing boards, and in many countries whether a student can access government aid at all. A degree from an unaccredited provider can be functionally unusable even when the coursework was real.
What we do: we display the accreditation status recorded for an institution in public datasets. What we do not do: we do not independently audit institutions, inspect campuses, or verify accreditors ourselves. Accreditation bodies vary in rigour between countries, and some organisations present themselves as accreditors without any recognised standing. Confirming an accreditor's own legitimacy — with the relevant national education ministry or recognised registry — is always worth the ten minutes, especially for online providers and for institutions operating across borders.
Worth verifying yourself
- Who accredits the institution, and is that accreditor recognised by the country's education authority?
- Is the accreditation institution-wide, or programmatic (one department only)?
- Is the specific program — not just the school — recognised for the licence or career the student wants?
- For online or multi-country providers: which jurisdiction actually issues the degree?
- Does the school confirm the same accreditation status on its own official website?
Signal 02
Reading the real cost — and why you'll see N/A.
Published tuition is the starting point, not the price. The funding guides cover award letters, net price and the four kinds of money in depth; this section only explains how cost data behaves in our catalogue.
Verified figures only
Tuition, fees and net price come from public datasets. When an institution has no verified figure, the field shows N/A — we do not interpolate a plausible number, and cost-based filters and 'cheapest first' sorting deliberately exclude those records.
N/A is information
It means we could not source the figure, not that the school is cheap, expensive or suspect. Check the institution's own official fee schedule before drawing a conclusion.
One year is not four
Costs and aid renew annually. A comparison of first-year numbers is a comparison of first-year numbers, whatever a directory shows you.
Signal 03
Safety, outcomes — and what is only an estimate.
Some numbers on an institution page are sourced fields. Others are figures we compute so that filters and sorting can work at all. We label the second group, and so should you when you talk about them.
Sourced fields
Reported per institution
- Campus safetyWe no longer show a safety score. There is no centrally published source we can verify, so the honest answer is to read the Clery Act crime statistics each U.S. institution publishes directly.
- Graduation rateThe share of students who complete their degree. Often more revealing than selectivity: it reflects whether students who enrol are supported through to finishing.
- Acceptance rateHow selective admission is. It describes an applicant pool, not teaching quality — a low rate is not a quality measure.
- Accreditation statusAs recorded in public datasets, per Signal 01 above.
Estimated from IPEDS-style fields
Computed, not reported
These three figures carry that exact label wherever they appear in the app. They are derived from public fields so the catalogue can be sorted and filtered — they are not institutional disclosures, not promises, and not predictions about an individual student.
- ROI scoreA cost-versus-earnings comparison expressed on a 0–100 scale. It is deliberately blank when tuition is unverified, because an estimate built on an estimate is not worth showing.
- 10-yr earningsA median earnings figure for the institution where reported, otherwise estimated. It describes past cohorts across all fields of study — not what any particular graduate will earn.
- Loan default rateA cohort-level repayment signal, estimated where not reported. It reflects a borrower population, not an individual's likelihood of anything.
What no directory can tell you
Teaching quality in a specific department, how a student will be supported through a hard semester, whether a city feels liveable, how responsive the aid office is when circumstances change, or what a particular degree will be worth in a decade. Those come from campus visits, open days, admitted-student calls and conversations with current students and faculty. Use this catalogue to build a shortlist worth spending that time on.
Signal 04
Where the data comes from.
Two claims we make on every page of this site, stated here in full so you can hold us to them.
IPEDS · College Scorecard · Wikidata / Wikimedia Commons
Institution records, cost fields and outcome fields come from these public datasets; campus photography is sourced from Wikimedia Commons, and profiles without a verified photo are marked as such rather than dressed up with a stock image. Public datasets lag reality by a year or more, so an institution's own official website is always the final authority on current fees, deadlines and program availability.
Independent · no paid placements
No institution can pay to appear, to rank higher, or to be featured. Ordering is produced entirely by the sort and filter settings you choose. UniversiMedia does not administer, broker or sell financial aid, and does not award any of the scholarships listed in its directory.