What the corpus covers
The current corpus represents 54 U.S. states and territories and a wide range of institutional settings, sizes, missions, and academic structures. It includes public universities, private nonprofit colleges, regional institutions, liberal arts colleges, HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, women-centered colleges, Tribal institutions, and selected technical, arts, music, work, and experiential colleges.
Among institutions reconciled to the federal candidate universe, 445 are public and 551 are private nonprofit. Four reviewed institutions sit outside the default Scorecard selection rules but remain because they offer distinctive undergraduate experiences.
Data completeness
Federal UNITIDs identify 999 of the 1,000 institutions. Deep Springs College is the documented exception. The corpus currently contains 944 reported admission rates, 986 average net-price records, and an official institutional link for every school.
The expansion added 700 colleges through reproducible batches, and the later scoring redesign applied stricter official-source standards to community closeness, faculty closeness, and support structure. In the 940-school rollout, 166 decisions at 152 schools advanced to independent review: 81 scores changed, 32 were validated without change, and 53 retained explicitly quarantined fallbacks after reviewers found the evidence insufficient. Other incomplete records remain research-required rather than being converted into low or neutral claims.
What is outside the corpus
The corpus is intentionally broad but not exhaustive. Another 687 institutions satisfy the broad federal registry rules but are not published. Absence is not a negative judgment about a school.
The default expansion excluded online-only, for-profit, graduate-only, non-operating, administrative-system, and specialized health institutions. Special-focus faith institutions were deferred unless already present as reviewed exceptions. Late expansion batches are more urban and mid-sized because earlier batches captured most eligible rural and very large campuses.
How students should use it
Coverage supports discovery, not certainty. Programs close, policies change, and campus character cannot be reduced to federal fields. Students should use recommendations to form better questions, then verify academic offerings, affordability, accessibility, support, safety, and lived experience directly with each institution.