Useful Information or Just Data: Library Facilities and No Test Colleges

I spend a good amount of time browsing through?  the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) checking on data available for inclusion in the DIY College Rankings College Search Spreadsheet. There are a lot of variables to choose from and as I scroll through the various lists, I start thinking, “Really? There’s more than one answer for this?”

What am I talking about??  How about this: “Library Facilities” as in “has own library.” Of the 1572 colleges on my list, only one had “none of the above” and 21 had “Shared financial support for library.” The one school without a library? A nursing school.

Of course, given the use of the internet, I could see more schools selecting “none of the above” unless the definition of what constitutes library facilities change.

Another variable that caught my eye was “Academic/Career Counseling Service.” Again, how many colleges wouldn’t offer it? A total of 6 were listed as “implied no.” I visited all six?  websites and three had some form of career counseling explicitly listed. One had it but it was under general student support and I couldn’t find it for the remaining two. I figured this was a quality control issue on the part of the colleges entering the data-they just didn’t check off the right box. Thus, the term “implied no.”

Lesson learned: if something doesn’t look right, see for yourself.

Other interesting tidbits about four-year colleges with 500 or more full-time undergraduate students:

• 361 required first year undergraduates to live on campus
• 683 give credit for life experiences
• 51 listed “implied no” for accepting AP Credit (again, a visit to a few websites showed this not to always be the case)
• 177 have an open admissions policy
• 105 have a 4-1-4 calendar system, often referred to having a “January Term”
• 54 answer “yes” to a “tuition guaranteed plan”
• 52 state that they neither “require” nor “recommend” college admission test scores

Okay, I know you’re dying to find out who the 52 no SAT or ACT schools are. The list is below. Check out the quality control of the data entry for yourself. And yes, I know that this list doesn’t have anywhere near as many schools as listed at FairTest.org.

If you’re interested in downloading the data yourself, I walk you through it here. If you would rather save yourself a lot of time and start using the data, you can get my spreadsheet here.

? Colleges That Neither Require Nor Recommend
College Admission Test Scores