Comparison of Top 11 College Search Engines: Does College Size Matter?

(This is part 5 of Comparison of Top 11 College Search Engines)Big-Fish-Small-Fish

The fourth element for our fictional high school student’s college search is school size. Without ever having attended college, many high school students have some very definitive ideas about what size school they want to attend. “Big” is associated with endless academic options, social opportunities, and alumni networking. “Small” is about personalized attention, small classes, dinners with professors, and tight-knit social groups.

In other words, when talking about college size, a lot of people are talking about the expected college experience–social and academic. And while these perceptions have some truth in them, size probably shouldn’t be the definitive factor in narrowing down your college list.

This applies especially to those interested in the “big” experience. Why? It comes down to numbers. There are 189 universities nationally with more than 10,000 full-time undergraduates.

Full-time
Undergraduates
Number of
Schools
2500 or less 856
2501-5000 284
5001-7500 143
7501-10000 89
10001-15000 72
15001-20000 60
20001 plus 57

Only 44 of them have four-year graduation rates of 50% or more. However, of the 1,372 schools that have 10,000 or fewer full-time undergraduates, 329 have graduation rates of 50% or better.

So does college size matter?

Not exactly. It’s not that small schools are necessarily better choices than large ones, there are just more of them to choose from. Size doesn’t guarantee anything in terms of experience or results. The sizes of the 47 institutions (with 500 or more full-time undergraduates) with an 85% or greater four-year graduation rate range from 507 to 14,928. Given that 24 had admission rates of less than 20% while all but two had accepted less than 40% of applicants, selectivity is likely to be more important for graduation rates than size.

Colleges with a Four-Year Graduation Rate of 85% or Better

NameStateFull-time
Under-
graduates
4 yr
Grad Rate
%
Admitted
The Juilliard SchoolNY507867
Scripps CollegeCA9408532
Haverford CollegePA12058923
Claremont McKenna CollegeCA12608714
Centre CollegeKY13438768
Swarthmore CollegePA15378614
Pomona CollegeCA15898913
Grinnell CollegeIA16158632
Kenyon CollegeOH16588736
Bates CollegeME17538527
Davidson CollegeNC17908925
Amherst CollegeMA18178613
Bowdoin CollegeME18319116
Washington and Lee UniversityVA18358819
Colby CollegeME18638629
Hamilton CollegeNY18688527
Babson CollegeMA20158529
Williams CollegeMA20319117
Macalester CollegeMN20358637
Carleton CollegeMN20379126
Lafayette CollegePA24388934
Middlebury CollegeVT24938818
Colgate UniversityNY28508529
College of the Holy CrossMA28919034
Wesleyan UniversityCT29328724
Bucknell UniversityPA35158627
Brandeis UniversityMA35638639
Dartmouth CollegeNH41398810
United States Naval AcademyMD4536867
Tufts UniversityMA51678821
Princeton UniversityNJ5327888
Yale UniversityCT5393898
University of ChicagoIL55598613
Johns Hopkins UniversityMD58668618
Washington University in St LouisMO64558818
Villanova UniversityPA65848546
Duke UniversityNC66318714
Vanderbilt UniversityTN67318714
Harvard UniversityMA7233866
Columbia University in the City of New YorkNY7236887
Georgetown UniversityDC72518918
University of Notre DameIN84628923
Northwestern UniversityIL85428618
Boston CollegeMA95338929
University of PennsylvaniaPA103248713
Cornell UniversityNY142458717
University of Virginia-Main CampusVA149288730

Even if you are absolutely certain of your desired school size, the college search websites may not accommodate that certainty. For some reason, the website designers believe that it’s necessary to provide the user with size categories rather than let the users enter the numbers themselves.

Part 1: Comparison of Top 11 College Search Engines
Part 2: Will Attending a Community College Save You Money?
Part 3: Should You Attend an Out-of-State Public University
Part 4: How Far Away Should You Go To College?
Part 5: Does College Size Matter?
Part 6: Colleges in Large Cities
Part 7: College Acceptance Rates
Part 8: Searching for Colleges by Majors
Part 9: The Results

Why? Are they afraid students won’t enter numbers big enough or small enough to include a significant number of their supporting institutions? I’m pretty sure it’s not because of some well-regarded and widely accepted categorization of colleges and universities by size. If that was the case, you would expect some consistency among the size choices from website to website and there are none.

The one website that does allow users to “enter” their own numbers, College Express, uses a slider bar scaled from 0 to 100,000. Do you know what that means? That means to limit the size to a range of 15,000 students, the end points will have to overlap in about a quarter-inch of space. It’s impossible to get an exact number using the slider bar.

The websites are also vague about what their actually counting. Is it all students, just undergraduate students, or only full-time undergraduate students? Only College View lets users choose whether to use all students or just undergraduate students. None of them address the difference between full-time and part-time students.

The table below shows the number of category choices available for each website and the range I ended up using to capture schools with 5,000 to 10,000 students. This sometimes included more than one category. It also shows the number schools found with the state filters, if available, as discussed in Part 4 of this series. I also included the results for the schools without state filters.

Number
of
Choices
Range Used
to Select
5,000-10,000
Results
with
State
Filter
Results
without
any State
Filter
Big Future 3 2,000-15,000 242
Cappex 5 2,500-15,000
CollegeData 6 5,000-9,999 82
CollegeNavigator 13* 5,000-10,000 82
CollegeProwler 6 5,000-10,000 238
College Reality Check 3 3,000-9,999 483
CollegeView (SuperMatch) 5 2,001-13,000
CollegeXpress any 4,831-9,958 69
My College Options 5 4,000-14,999 112
Peterson’s 5 2,000-13,000 298
Unigo 7 5,001-10,000
DIY College Rankings any 5,000-10,000 76 232

* users can select for minimum and maximum values

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