How Do I Choose a College for Undergrad?

Amidst the soaring costs of tuition, US universities remain hubs of ambition and aspiration. Through data-driven visualizations, let's try to unravel the factors influencing various indicators of success for students, both at an individual and an institutional level. These aim to inform a student's decision on how to choose a college.

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Undergraduate Student Population

The dataset used contains data collected from 2055 US institutions. The average undergraduate student population is about 4030. The visualization on the left shows a bubble chart of all these institutions- the larger the bubble, the larger its undergraduate student body. The colors of the bubbles indicate the control of the institution, as outlined below.

⬤	Private College
⬤	Public College
⬤	Private For-Profit College

Hover over a bubble to see which university it represents, and the number of undergrads currently enrolled.

Options by Region

Being such a large country, the number of colleges for higher education vary greatly based on the region you're looking in. Travelling outside of one's state is not uncommon for a better education, however, out-of-state tuition fees are typically significantly higher than in-state.
Hover over the clusters in the visualization to see which region has how many universities.

Financial considerations

This is a box plot of average costs to study in colleges seggregated by the type of locales they are situated in. These costs include tuition fee, living costs, and financial aid.
Hover over the boxes to see the median cost in each locale.

Student Debts

Every year, students incur huge sums of money in debt in order to pursue college education. Out of the 2055 institutions in our dataset, 2055 have a median debt of $38000 or less. Move the slider around to play with these values.

$38,000

Admission Rate and Post-Graduation Success

Often, the lower the acceptance rate or admission rate of a university, the better the quality of education it can provide. This chart plots the admission rates of the university against the mean earnings 8 years after entry into the college. The ones with the highest earnings seem to have very low acceptance rates. Furthermore, the color of the dots shows the percentage of students who completed their degree within 150% of the intended period.

⬤	< 33%
⬤	33% - 66%
⬤	> 66%

Hover over a bubble to see the university name.