Editorial policy

Sources

We use only a college's own official domains for aid, scholarship, testing and English-requirement facts. Cost and outcome statistics come from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard. We do not use rankings sites, forums or other aggregators as a source of facts.

How a fact gets on the site

1. Collect. Our bot saves a copy of the official page.
2. Extract. An automated reader records a value together with the exact sentence that states it.
3. Check. Software confirms the sentence appears word-for-word on the saved page, that the page belongs to the college, and that the value is in a sensible range. A second, independent reviewer checks that the sentence really states the fact rather than implying it.
4. Publish or leave blank. If any check fails, the fact is not shown; the field reads “not published”. We never fill gaps with guesses.

When a college website blocks automated access, an editor may read its public pages in an ordinary web browser, as any visitor can, and record facts from them with the same checks. We never bypass logins, paywalls or security challenges.

Pages show whether a record was checked automatically or reviewed by a person, and the date. The editor, Jordan Lee, is responsible for the methods and for corrections.

Updates and corrections

Policies change, so data is re-checked regularly and every page shows its last-checked date. If you find an error, write to info@collegeaidatlas.com with the page and the official link; we correct confirmed errors promptly.

Independence

Colleges cannot pay to be included or ranked. If advertising appears on the site, it is clearly separate from the information and never changes what we publish.