About CollegeCostGuide

Last updated September 10, 2026

What this site is

CollegeCostGuide publishes tuition, acceptance rate, SAT and graduation figures for 6,119 US colleges and universities, plus a state-by-state overview of college costs. Every college has a profile page and a tuition page, and each state has a page ranking all of its colleges by cost.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure on this site comes from U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard (Most Recent Cohorts). We download the public dataset directly from the publishing agency and republish it here in a form that is easier to look up. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of that agency or any government body.

How the numbers are calculated

• In-state and out-of-state tuition — annual tuition figures as reported for the most recent cohort.
• Acceptance rate — admitted applicants as a share of applicants.
• Average SAT score — the average score of admitted students where the college reports one.
• State and national averages — arithmetic averages of in-state tuition across the colleges we cover.
• Comparisons — each college is shown against both its state average and the national average.

How often we update

The Department of Education publishes this data annually. When a new release lands we re-run our pipeline and regenerate every page, so tuition and admission figures track the newest official cohort.

Who runs this site

CollegeCostGuide is an independent data-publishing project. We are not a recruitment agency, a college, a lender or a broker, and we do not sell the products and services that appear in the advertisements on these pages.

How we make money

The site is free to use and supported by display advertising. Advertisers have no input into the data, the methodology, the rankings, or the order in which items are listed.

Corrections

If a figure looks wrong, please tell us — we read every report and correct the underlying dataset where it is warranted. See the contact page.