Hey all, I've seen a few mentions of the 'Common Data Set' especially for schools like Michigan. But I’m not really sure what information it provides or how to use it. Could someone give me a crash course on this please? Would be super helpful!
Absolutely, happy to give you a quick rundown!
The Common Data Set (CDS) is an informative tool created by a group of college institutions and publishers like the College Board. It's meant to be a standard format for colleges to provide information about their institution, which can be incredibly useful for college admissions research.
University of Michigan, like many colleges, provides a yearly CDS that is publicly accessible through their website. The data contained includes information like:
1. General Information: This includes basic campus facts such as type of institution, degrees offered, types of academic calendar, campuses, and so on.
2. Enrollment and Persistence: This covers institutional enrollment—by sex, by race/ethnicity, and undergraduates by age.
3. Admissions: This is often the part most interesting to prospective students. It details first-time, first-year (freshman) admission, including applications numbers, acceptance rates, SAT/ACT scores of admitted students, factors the school considers for admissions and how much weight each factor carries, and more.
4. Academics: This portion offers insight into class sizes, degrees conferred, most popular majors and so on.
5. Annual Expenses: Here, you'll find detailed costs for tuition, room and board, fees, and other educational expenses.
6. Financial Aid: This details the financial aid awarded to students, including types of aid and average amounts.
7. Instructional Faculty and Class Size: This will give you insights into faculty ratio, faculty status (full-time or part-time), class size.
The CDS for the University of Michigan or any other school can be found by doing a simple internet search of "[University Name] Common Data Set." Each section will have a letter and number code for easy reference, so if you're searching for specific information, these codes can help you find it more quickly.
To utilize this information, you can compare the data of different colleges you're interested in. For instance, you can look up the percentage of accepted students who receive financial aid at each school or the acceptance rate of out-of-state students.
Remember, the CDS is a valuable tool, but it shouldn’t be your only source of information. Always integrate other sources to get a well-rounded view of a college.
I hope this gives a good overview of what the CDS is and how it can be used!
CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.