Counselor toolkit
The lookups you need mid-meeting, free and without a login — plus what is actually in the database behind them.
These reference pages are free and ungated — no school licence, no seat, no login. They exist because the questions below have real answers in primary federal data and in colleges’ own published policies, and because the platforms sold to districts do not publish that layer. Every page names its source; where the source is an institution’s own page, we link straight to it so a family can check the claim without going through you.
Questions you get asked, and where to answer them
"Will State U give my student credit for a 3 on AP Chem?"
Look up the exam, then the state or the school. Each row shows the minimum qualifying score, credit hours and the course it replaces, and links to the college's own policy page so the family can verify it without you.
"How many credits will transfer from the community college?"
Transfer admissions and credit policies from Common Data Set section D and state articulation statutes — minimum and maximum credits accepted, GPA floors, and which authority actually governs (state statute usually beats whatever the college website says).
"What will this actually cost us?"
Net price by family-income bracket, not sticker price, plus median debt and post-enrolment earnings — filed by roughly four in five institutions. Income-bracket net price is the number that changes a family's decision; the sticker price almost never does.
"Which scholarships is my student actually eligible for?"
Federal, state, local and university awards filtered by state, GPA, major and school, each with a source dataset and a verified-on date rather than an undated aggregator listing.
"Is this major worth it at this school?"
Earnings and debt at the program level rather than the institution level. Institution-wide medians hide the fact that two majors at the same college can differ by more than two colleges differ from each other.
"Can the family get the application fee waived?"
Fee-waiver eligibility is checked against the indicators we can corroborate, and reported as corroborated, unknown or contradicted — never as a confident yes built on a gap in the data.
"When does my student have to register for the SAT?"
SAT, ACT and AP dates with registration and late-registration deadlines, each carrying the source URL and the date it was verified.
"Does this school even sponsor the sport?"
Roster size by sport by school from EADA filings, with school-level athletic aid totals. We never print a per-sport aid figure, because the federal filing does not contain one.
What is actually in the database
Row counts below are read from the database when this page is built — they are not typed into the copy, so they cannot drift away from what we hold.
| Corpus | Rows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| AP credit rules Minimum qualifying score, credit hours and course equivalent per college per exam — 2,068 of those colleges linked to their own published policy page. | 84,366 rules | Colleges' own advanced-standing / AP credit pages |
| Scholarship programs Federal, state, local and university awards with eligibility, deadline and amount, each carrying a source dataset and a verified-on date. | 31,087 programs | Sponsor and state agency program pages |
| Colleges Net price by family-income bracket, graduation and retention rates, median debt and post-enrolment earnings — published for roughly four in five institutions. Admission rate and test ranges exist for far fewer, because open-admission and non-test-reporting institutions do not file them; where a value is missing we show it as missing. | 6,318 institutions | IPEDS and College Scorecard |
| Program-level outcomes Earnings and debt at the major level, not the institution level — the grain that actually answers "is this major worth it here". | 220,960 programs | College Scorecard field-of-study files |
| High schools Enrolment, staffing, locale, demographics and grade cohorts, with outcomes shown as the bands the federal source publishes rather than false precision. | 11,998 schools | NCES CCD / PSS and EDFacts |
| Private K-12 schools Enrolment, grade span, student-teacher ratio and affiliation for private schools nationwide. | 22,345 schools | NCES Private School Universe Survey |
| Transfer admissions & credit policies Transfer applicants, admits and enrolled counts plus minimum credits, maximum credits accepted and GPA floors — the numbers a 2+2 plan lives or dies on. | 658 policies | Common Data Set section D and state articulation statutes |
| Sport participation rows Roster size by sport by school with school-level athletic aid totals — never a per-sport aid figure, because the federal filing does not contain one. | 18,045 sport-school rows | Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act filings |
| Trade & vocational programs Completion rate, debt and earnings for certificate and associate programs, alongside the four-year comparison. | 4,283 programs | College Scorecard and IPEDS completions |
| 529 plan rules State-by-state deduction limits, residency rules and fees, with a calculator. | 13 state plans | State 529 program disclosure documents |
| Upcoming test dates SAT, ACT and AP administration dates with registration and late-registration deadlines. | 61 upcoming dates | College Board and ACT published calendars |
What we will not do
We do not sell ranking placement, we do not print a number the source did not publish, and we do not turn a missing value into a confident answer — a blank cell stays blank. Federal sources that publish outcomes as bands (EDFacts proficiency, graduation) are shown as bands, because printing a point estimate from a ten-point range claims precision the source deliberately withheld.
Frequently asked questions
Do counselors have to pay to use these lookup tools?+
No. Every reference page linked here is free and open — no login, no seat licence, no district contract. Counselors pay us nothing; families pay for planning products if they want one. We built the reference layer because a counselor who can answer a credit or cost question in ten seconds is the reason the family trusts the rest of the site.
How is this different from Naviance, Scoir or MajorClarity?+
Those platforms are sold to a school or district and are gated behind the school's licence, so a student loses access when they change schools and an independent consultant has no access at all. These pages are public. They also solve a different problem: the school platforms manage the application workflow, while this is the underlying data — credit policies, transfer rules, income-bracket net price, program-level outcomes — that the workflow tools do not publish.
Can I cite or link to these pages for families?+
Yes. Every page states its data source and, where the source is an institution's own page, links to it directly so a family can verify the claim at the origin. Numbers are reported, not modelled, unless the page's methodology note says otherwise.
Where does the data come from?+
IPEDS and College Scorecard for institutions and program outcomes, NCES for K-12, EADA for athletics, Common Data Set section D and state articulation statutes for transfer, and each college's own published advanced-standing page for AP credit. Each corpus in the table on this page names its source and its live row count. Row count is not coverage: a federal file that omits a value for an institution leaves that cell blank here rather than filled with an estimate, and the pages say so where the gap is large.
Keep exploring
Data sources: IPEDS and College Scorecard · NCES CCD / Private School Universe Survey and EDFacts · EADA athletics filings · Common Data Set section D and state articulation statutes · Colleges' own published AP credit and scholarship pages. Figures are the most recent values published in each federal dataset; cells with no published value are shown as “—” and never estimated. CertiHomes Education does not sell rankings or accept placement fees.