Edmit brings together a variety of data to inform our net tuition estimates. These include:
We use your GPA and standardized test scores to calculate scholarships that colleges award for merit, based on where you fit in the distribution for a particular college and what we know about the scholarships awarded at that college.
We start out using your zip code as a rough proxy for your financial need. Where you live has a high correlation with household income, which is a key factor in determining your expected family contribution (EFC) on the FAFSA, which colleges use to calculate need-based financial aid. You can provide your actual household income or EFC to improve our estimate in your profile section.
We look at the characteristics and policies of the college you're considering to infer some things about its financial aid strategy. For example, colleges with large endowments often meet the full need of admitted students. Some colleges give no merit money to students with no financial need, while many do.
We use thousands of real data points from students on what they have actually received from different colleges to validate our algorithm and assumptions. And we put it all together to tell you what you might expect.
Edmit's estimates are based on a statistical model, and sometimes limited data, so it isn't perfect! As a company dedicated to transparency, we are constantly working to identify flaws and improve our estimates -- and we want your help.
Click here to read about the shortcomings we know about, and to tell us about others.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
Are you interested in participating on the Council or in collaborating on research? Please reach out to our Co-founder and CEO, Nick Ducoff, at nick@edmit.me
Our full privacy policy is available at: https://www.edmit.me/privacy
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.
Founded by recognized university leaders, Edmit provides personalized insights and advice to help families find colleges that meet their academic goals and are within their financial means. Families that use Edmit make smarter college choices leading to less debt and better earnings outcomes, saving thousands of dollars.
