Find the Colleges Where Your Student Will Actually Thrive
Not just a list of famous names. This assessment matches your student's interests, strengths, and grades, and your family's real budget, to the schools where they are most likely to get in, graduate, and launch well. Built on federal data for 250+ traditional four-year colleges.
No account · No credit card · Results in your inbox and on screen
What you'll get
- 🎯A balanced top-8 college list: schools that fit AND schools your student will actually get into, each labeled Safety, Likely, Match, or Reach
- 💰The real cost after financial aid for YOUR income level, not the sticker price. At many private schools the difference is $40,000 a year
- 🧠A Strengths Snapshot from five short exercises: what your student is naturally good at, and the careers and majors that points toward
- 📊Honest outcome data for every match: six-year graduation rate, how many students return after freshman year, and what graduates in your student's intended major actually earn
- 📄A one-page report you can print, save as PDF, and share with your student, your family, or a school counselor
How it works
Three quick modules for parents, plus two optional ones. Steps 4 and 5 take a few extra minutes and unlock the admission odds and the Strengths Snapshot. For step 5, hand the phone to your student.
Interests
12 questions · ~3 min
Rate statements about what your student enjoys and gravitates toward. This builds their interest profile using the same framework career counselors use.
College life
10 questions · ~3 min
How your student learns best, the campus vibe they want, and what a great four years looks like to them.
Family priorities
8 questions · ~2 min
Your budget, household income band (for real aid estimates), location, size, and what matters most to your family.
Academics
optional · ~1 min
GPA, test scores, and course rigor. This unlocks the admissions reality check: honest Safety-to-Reach odds for every school on the list.
Strengths
optional · ~6 min
Five short exercises your student does themselves. Unlocks the Strengths Snapshot: measured abilities, matching careers, and majors worth a look.
How the match is made
No black box. Here is exactly what goes into every recommendation.
Interests: the Holland (RIASEC) framework
The interest questions map your student to the six Holland dimensions used across career counseling and the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET database, then connect those interests to real fields of study.
Matches: what each school actually teaches
We look at the real distribution of bachelor's degrees each school awards (U.S. Department of Education data), so a school only scores high for your student when it genuinely concentrates in their fields, not just because it is famous.
Costs: net price for your income, from federal data
College Scorecard reports what families at each income level actually pay after grants and scholarships. That number, not the sticker price, is what we show and score.
Odds: your student's numbers vs. each school's admitted class
With GPA and scores, we compare your student against each school's published admitted middle 50% and acceptance rate, and label every match Safety, Likely, Match, Reach, or Far Reach. We also make sure the final list includes schools with odds solidly in their favor.
Thriving: will they stay, finish, and land well
Every match shows the six-year graduation rate (the federal standard measure, reported as completion within 150% of normal time), freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, economic diversity, and median earnings (major-specific where the data exists). Getting in is step one; thriving and finishing is the goal.
The Strengths Snapshot is a quick online snapshot, not a formal ability test, and the admission odds are honest estimates, not predictions. Treat everything here as the start of a good family conversation. Data: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard and O*NET; refreshed as federal data updates.
Built on real data, not guesses
10-15 minutes, and the college conversation gets a lot clearer