The Edstimate®

The Edstimate® is Edmit’s best estimate of the price you’ll pay for a college for one year (including living expenses), after subtracting financial aid grants and scholarships.

 

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How we calculate your Edstimate®

We use three different approaches to estimating your price for a given college, and combine them to come up with one number for you.

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Historical aid data

We use data that colleges report about their financial aid, scholarships, and pricing in past years.

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Other students like you

Edmit has thousands of data points on what other students actually paid for college. We look at students that are similar to you and what financial aid they received.

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Scholarships

If a college has automatic scholarships based on GPA, SAT, or ACT scores, we apply those to your Edstimate when you qualify. We also take into account tuition reciprocity agreements and state grants.

Frequently Asked Questions


Can my Edstimate® change?

Yes, you might see your Edstimate® change. Our team is working every day to make our data more accurate by incorporating new information we receive from partners, colleges and students. If you have questions about a change in your numbers, you can always reach out to us for an explanation!

 

What's included in the Edstimate®?

The amount shown represents the estimated full cost - to you - of attending the college for one year. This includes tuition, fees, room & board, books & supplies, and other expenses such as travel or personal expenses (the “cost of attendance”, or “published cost”), minus the scholarship and grant money we estimate you’ll receive.

The Edstimate® includes only "free money" from the college in the form of grants and scholarships (need and merit based).

The Edstimate® does not assume any loans. Think of the Edstimate® as your price for a college. You'd have to cover this cost using your cash (from savings, income, gifts, etc.) or by taking student loans.

Find out how much you'll pay for the colleges on your list.
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Financial Grades


How is the Financial Grade calculated?

Edmit’s Financial Grades measure two things:

  • Will you be able to comfortably repay your student loan, given the salary you can expect after graduation? (Affordability)
  • Are the college’s earnings outcomes high compared to similar colleges? (Earnings)

If the answer to both questions is “yes,” the college receives an “A.”

If the answer to only one of those question is “yes,” the college receives a “B.”

If the answer to both questions is “no,” the college receives a “C.”

 

How do you define a college's Affordability?

In Edmit, we say a college is "affordable" for you if you could comfortably make the loan payments after graduation. We use the following rule of thumb: your total student loans should not be greater than your salary in the first year after graduation.

In your Edmit account, you will be able to provide information on your savings and how much you'll contribute annually to college from other income sources.

Since we know the cost of the college (either the Edstimate® or your actual cost), we can then calculate your expected loan amount. We compare it with our earnings estimates (taking your major into account) to determine whether the college is "affordable." If not, we'll tell you "it's a stretch."

 

How do you calculate a college's Earnings?

Our earnings estimates combines government data, survey data, college data, and research on how different majors impact long-term career outcomes (for example, Doug Webber's analysis). See below for the key data sources used in Edmit.

We then compare a college's earnings to the earnings of similar colleges.

 

The data sources behind Edmit's numbers

We use a lot of different sources of data, including:

  • Government data, including the College Scorecard and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which are maintained by the Department of Education, and data from the US Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics
  • Information from colleges and universities about admissions requirements, scholarships, and pricing
  • Data owned by private companies or research organizations, including Peterson's (the Common Data Set), Payscale, and the Princeton Review
  • Data from students themselves on what scholarships and financial aid they actually received

Our Edstimates® are based on statistical models, and sometimes limited data, so they aren't perfect! The amount of data we have for the college affects the accuracy of our Edstimates.

As a company dedicated to transparency, we are constantly working to identify flaws and improve our data -- and we want your help. If you see an issue, you can report it when logged in to your account (or chat with us here on this page).

Privacy & Security

Our full privacy policy is available at: https://www.edmit.me/privacy

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Edmit uses industry-standard security practices, like SSL/TLS encryption and a tightly-secured, multi-tier private cloud network, to store and display your data.

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We strive in everything we do to keep your information safe. We don’t share your data without your permission. All communications done through Edmit are controlled by you.

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Our team monitors our infrastructure and applications regularly, performs third-party security audits, and implements security best practices.

Data Integrity Council

Our relationships with researchers and experts inform our work and ensure the information you receive on Edmit is reliable, credible, and always improving. The Data Integrity Council ensures we are informed by the latest and best research, and gives input on our data sources and the algorithm we use to provide estimates.

Reis Hagerman

Reis Hagerman is currently working with the the State of Maine’s Finance Authority on tools to help students with financial planning for college. Throughout his career he has worked on many aspects of higher education enrollment, marketing, and sales, including leadership positions with the American Student Assistance, as Vice President for Enrollment at Saint Joseph’s College, and in the CollegeBoard’s Higher Education Division. He also helped found Think Ahead Inc., one of the first college net price calculators.

Dr. Robert Kelchen, PhD

Robert is Assistant Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Education Leadership Management and Policy at Seton Hall University. His research focuses on higher education finance and accountability policies, including areas such as student financial aid, college rankings, and program evaluation. He is frequently quoted in the media, including The Washington Post, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, and Politico, and he was recently selected as one of the 15 most indispensable academics on Twitter by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Amanda Janice Roberson

Amanda Janice Roberson is a senior research analyst at the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), where she is a member of the policy research team. Her research interests include using data to inform policy and practice; college access, affordability and success; and federal higher education policy. Much of her work at IHEP centers on postsecondary data, metrics, and infrastructure, including contributions to the Postsecondary Metrics Framework and A Blueprint for Better Information: Recommendations for a Student-Level Data Network.

Dr. Terianne Hall, PhD

Teri is currently the Program Director for the Data Analytics programs at Level Education at Northeastern University. In this role, she develops curriculum for new and existing programs, trains instructors and works with students. Teri is also a part-time lecturer in the Supply Chain Management Program at MIT. Previously, she worked at an aerospace startup where she designed and implemented control systems and developed localization and tracking algorithms for antenna arrays. Teri received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from MIT in Mechanical Engineering. Her research involved developing computational models to evaluate the design of new urban areas.

Dr. Doug Webber, PhD

Doug is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Economics Department at Temple University and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). He studies labor economics and the economics of higher education and has published on a wide variety of topics in the fields of labor economics and the economics of higher education, including: earnings inequality, expenditures in higher education, the gender pay gap, the economic returns to college major, and student loan debt. He has testified in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on the topic of student loan policy and higher education finance.

Cathy O’Neil

Cathy O’Neil earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, was a postdoc at the MIT math department, and a professor at Barnard College where she published a number of research papers in arithmetic algebraic geometry. She then switched over to the private sector, working as a quant for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the middle of the credit crisis, and then for RiskMetrics, a risk software company that assesses risk for the holdings of hedge funds and banks. She left finance in 2011 and started working as a data scientist in the New York start-up scene, building models that predicted people’s purchases and clicks. She wrote Doing Data Science in 2013 and launched the Lede Program in Data Journalism at Columbia in 2014. She is a regular contributor to Bloomberg View and wrote the book Weapons of Math Destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. She recently founded ORCAA, an algorithmic auditing company.