DIY College Rankings Blog Post – Page 91 – Do It Yourself College Rankings

What You Need to Know About the DIY College Rankings College Profile

07/26/201611/12/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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In each of my newsletters, I include a brief profile of a 50-50 college. For those new to my website, a 50-50 school is a college that accepts at least 49% of students and has at least a 49% graduation rate. I use the four-year rate for private schools and the five-year rate for public. You can download a complete list here.

I have also created profiles for over 350 of them so far and am gradually getting them all listed. You can find individual profiles here. With all of the college search websites available, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to wonder why I bother, or more importantly, why you should bother to look at them.

How to Pay Less for College: Avoid Goldilocks Colleges

07/26/201611/10/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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I started off this series of How to Pay Less for College by discussing how the economics of supply and demand are the basis for cutting the cost of college. The next two posts on college rankings and geography were basically explaining two significant elements that affect how much families will pay for college. Today I want to talk about a third factor that falls under the supply and demand of college admissions: college size.

How to Pay Less for College: Geography Matters

07/26/201611/03/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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As someone who recently bought a house in an economically booming market, I can tell you the same house costs a lot more near the city center than out in the suburbs. My husband and I looked at the trade-offs in terms of travel time and cost and for us, the suburbs made sense. We don’t live in Austin, we are actually in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the city of Hutto. And despite the Hippo fetish, we’re good with that.

How does this have anything to do with how to pay less for college? Because how much you pay for college can depend on location.

How to Pay Less for College: The Value of Rankings

02/28/202110/27/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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In my last post, I talked about how even colleges are subjected to the laws of supply and demand. The more students want to attend a college, the more the college can charge. If you want to pay less for college, you need to consider colleges with higher acceptance rates. Now I want to look at why so many students are interested in the same college. What makes 50 or fewer colleges so much more attractive than the remaining 1,500? Can you say “college rankings?”

5 Most Popular Free Downloads to Help You Find a College

07/26/201610/22/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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I know that not everyone is able to keep up with all of the information I post to the website. For the past six months or so I’ve been creating PDFs for some of the posts, usually those with lists of colleges but not always. In case you’ve missed them, I’m listing the five most popular posts based on their PDF downloads. And no, there isn’t any fee for downloading.

8 Infographics to Help You Understand College Athletic Recruiting

06/20/201910/21/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

An orangutan scratching its head is pictured in a forest setting with text on a banner below saying "Infographics to Help You Understand College Athletic Recruiting.

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If you’re a high school athlete or the parents of an athlete who wants to play at the college level, the sooner you understand the college athletic recruiting process, the sooner you can use the process rather than have the process control you. And while the chances of being paid to be an athlete in your particular sport may be minuscule, it can’t hurt having a grasp of some of the issue of paying student-athletes. I think the following infographics on college athletes provide a good place to start your education.

What You Need to Know About Virginia Colleges

07/26/201610/02/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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Where to Start Looking for Virginia Colleges

What’s Wrong with These 135 Colleges…and Does it Matter?

05/24/202109/30/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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You may have missed the excitement last May when Ronald Nelson announced he was going to attend the University of Alabama. This was a big deal not because Alabama had grabbed the top football recruit in the nation. It was a big deal because Nelson was actually accepted at all eight Ivy League schools, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Washington University in St. Louis. He turned them all down to attend the honors college at the University of Alabama.

50-50 Highlights: Is Your College Degree Worth More Than a High School Diploma?

07/26/201609/17/2015 by Michelle Kretzschmar

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Something happened this weekend that most families trying to figure out how to pick and pay for college missed–and most colleges are probably good with this. This weekend the government released a revised College Scorecard that lets users filter schools based on graduation rates, average annual costs, and graduate median salary. Better yet, all the data collected (although not necessarily used) by the College Scorecard was also released for downloading. Guess what I’ve been doing since Sunday?