Benchmarking Tutorials

The following tutorials were created to empower you to gather data and compare institutions using various external resources.  IPEDS contains the most extensive database, however is the most complicated to navigate.  The other databases are intended to provide commonly requested benchmarking data.

Using IPEDS to Compare Institutions

Using College Navigator
Using College Scorecard
Using Equity in Athletics Data Analysis

Tutorial: Using College Navigator

Data available include: tuition and fees, financial aid, enrollment, admissions, retention and graduation rates, degrees awarded by major, accreditation, crime statistics, and loan default rates.

1. Navigate to https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
2. Type in school name or use search criteria to find a list of schools to benchmark (show both the basic and the advanced options under “More Search Options”)
3. Click on the “Add to Favorites” button next to the school’s name.  This will build a benchmarking list found by hovering over the “My Favorites” tab in the upper right corner
4. While hovering on “My Favorites”, check the boxes next to the school’s names of the schools that you would like to compare the data for. Click on “Compare” to see the most recent IPEDS data for all the schools on financial aid, enrollment, student demographics, admissions, retention rate, and graduation rate
5. Click on “Export Compare” at the top to save all the benchmarking data as an excel file

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Tutorial: Using College Scorecard

Data available include: affordability, retention and graduation rates, value, enrollment by race/ethnicity and Pell status, SAT/ACT scores, and most popular majors.

1. Navigate to https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/
2. Click on “Name” and type in school name or use other search criteria to find a list of schools to compare.
3. Click on “Find Schools”.
4. Look through the list of schools and click on the school name to pull up the information about the school’s affordability and value

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Tutorial: Using Equity in Athletics Data Analysis (EADA)

Data available include: student-athlete enrollment by gender, coach salaries, revenue, and expenses.

1. Navigate to https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/
2. Click on the “Compare Data for Multiple Schools” button.
3. Type in the name of school or use search criteria to find a list of schools to compare. Click on the “continue” button.
4. Check the boxes next to the names of the schools you want to compare, then click the “continue” button.
5. If you want to add more schools to compare with, click on the “add schools” button and repeat step 4 and step 5. You can add up to 4 institutions.
6. Click on “Continue” to see the most recent data for the school’s athletic program on participants, coaching staff, coaching salaries, revenues and expenses.
7. Click on the printer image to print the data.

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