Guides to the thousands of U.S. colleges litter the shelves of libraries and bookstores. While it may be tempting to spend some of your hard-earned cash on a book, there is a resource that can help you cut out the middle-man.
The Common Data Set (CDS) Initiative is a “collaborative effort among data providers in the higher education community and publishers as represented by the College Board, Peterson’s, and U.S. News & World Report.” Essentially it helps connect data about colleges to organizations that need them, either for ranking or publication. It’s meant to help compare colleges to one another.
Many colleges release their completed CDS forms to the public domain, where they are accessible via search engines.
The data within these sets range from “Percent who live off-campus or commute” to “Special study programs” to “Total number [of instructional facility] whose highest degree is a master’s but not a terminal master’s.”
If you’re curious to know the extent to which the University of Florida and University of Miami weigh recommendation letters in their application processes, simply refer to the CDS. After looking up each school’s CDS, you’ll find out that at UF, recommendations are “not considered,” while UM considers them “very important.”
This information could be valuable to seniors considering applying. Be sure to take all this information with a grain of salt, though; there is objective data from previous years and subjective data that might mean many different things.
If you’re feeling down that you’re not in your dream school’s middle 50 percent, there are always outliers. If you find yourself fixated to the table about the weight given to different parts of an application, don’t forget that the data is partial to the person filling out the CDS form and to the university they work for. The distinction between “very important” and “important” varies among colleges.
Data is power, but there is such a thing as too much data. Nevertheless, the CDS is both free and a great way to peer into the college of your choice, which makes it a valuable resource.
To find the common data set, Goggle “Common Data Set” and your school of choice, or use the links below:
FSU:
UCF:
UF:
UM:
