What's new

New feature#139

Where the students went, which colleges are really online, and which states gain first-years

A seventh national trend study follows undergraduates to the biggest campuses and research universities over ten years and asks what the pandemic did; every college now shows how much of it is online; each state's page shows the first-years it gains from and loses to other states.

Plans#138

An admin console, planned

A plan for the place where the site's owner can find and fix any account, see what the site computes but never shows, watch each college's data freshness, and start reruns or approve data changes.

Fix#137

High school data publishes in smaller steps

The step that publishes high school data to the site now writes in smaller batches and waits out a database timeout instead of failing, so the AP course lists from College Board reach every page.

Plans#135

Plans for a five-step estimate, a selectivity tier, and plainer words

Five new specs plan the next version of Quad's estimate (five levels from High reach to Safe), a selectivity tier for every college, "applicants like you" wording, and the record beyond the numbers.

Data#134

Every high school's AP courses, by name, from College Board

High school pages now list the AP courses College Board authorizes each school to offer, public and private, and the course picker and the rigor reading start from that list instead of a bare count.

Data#133

We checked our AP course counts against College Board's official list

We checked our count of AP courses at each high school against College Board's official AP Course Ledger for 41 pilot schools; the two agreed within two courses at 59% of them, short of our 80% bar, so the count stays as it is while we decide how to present it.

Improvement#132

Plan: a two-minute setup and a calmer plan page

Plan now starts with a short four-step setup (grades, test, AP courses, review), groups your colleges under Reach, Target, and Likely, opens the calendar on the next eight weeks, and shows parents their child's plan first.

Data#131

Graduation rates printed as fractions read correctly

Graduation rates that colleges print as fractions, such as 0.945, are now stored correctly, and five more colleges show graduation rates by group.

Data#130

Newer graduation rates by group for 28 more colleges

Twenty-eight more colleges now show graduation rates for Pell, loan, and other students from their own Common Data Set, after a re-check with the corrected graduation checks.

Data#129

Georgia Tech's fall 2025 admissions figures corrected

Georgia Tech now shows 66,912 applicants, 8,819 admitted, and 4,050 enrolled for fall 2025, taken from its own first-year class profile.

Improvement#128

Plan: weighted GPAs show as entered

A weighted GPA such as 4.4 now shows as 4.4 on your profile and your plan, instead of being converted down to 4.0.

Data#127

College-reported admissions: 4 new figures from colleges' own sites

4 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Data#126

College-reported admissions: 2 new figures from colleges' own sites

2 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Data#125

College-reported admissions: 8 new figures from colleges' own sites

8 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Data#124

College-reported admissions: 6 new figures from colleges' own sites

6 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Fix#123

Fix: graduation rates by Pell status from colleges' own reports

Fourteen more colleges now show graduation rates by Pell Grant status for the class that entered in fall 2019, from their own Common Data Sets, because our checks now compare each college's figures with the matching federal class.

New feature#122

Where you stand: Quad's estimate, your courses, and how each college reads a record

Every college page now says how that college reads an application, you can list your advanced courses and see them against what your high school offers, and Quad's own estimate sorts colleges into Reach, Target, or Likely with what went into it.

Data#121

College-reported admissions: 5 new figures from colleges' own sites

5 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Data#120

College-reported admissions: 16 new figures from colleges' own sites

16 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Data#119

College-reported admissions: 7 new figures from colleges' own sites

7 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

New feature#105

Plan: your colleges sorted for you, and a calendar for the family

Plan is now in the main menu, sorts your colleges from your numbers, starts every round from your Dream, says when another test would help, and gives parents a color-coded calendar across their children.

Plans#118

Plans: how Quad's estimate is built, kept with the plans until launch

The detailed plan for how Quad's Reach, Target, or Likely estimate is worked out now sits beside the other plans, ready to build, and moves somewhere private at launch.

Plans#117

Plans for Quad's estimate: where you stand, and what goes into it

Plans for a sharper Reach, Target, or Likely on every college profile and in the planner, built from your courses, your pool, and how each college says it reads a record, and computed by Quad's own model.

Behind the scenes#116

A list of colleges whose own figures we couldn't get

We now keep a list of every college whose own published figures we couldn't read yet, with the reason, so we can look into them and fix the gaps.

Improvement#115

More colleges' own Common Data Sets can be read

Our reader now opens a college's published Common Data Set file even when the college's site asks automated readers to stay away, so more colleges can show figures from their own report.

Fix#114

Reading the college documents we found

Common Data Sets that don't print their year on the cover, class profiles posted as PDFs, and colleges whose sites have one odd link are now read instead of skipped.

Data#113

College-reported admissions: 9 new figures from colleges' own sites

9 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Fix#112

Fix: data updates no longer stop on a page with an unusual character

The automated college data update no longer stops when a college's web page has an unusual character (such as an emoji cut off mid-symbol), so one odd page can no longer block an entire update.

Behind the scenes#110

College-reported data runs stay in sync with directory listings

Fixed two automatic-check gaps a growing college-reported dataset had exposed: a stale reporter-count tripwire, and data runs that skipped re-merging directory listings.

Data#109

College-reported admissions: 42 new figures from colleges' own sites

42 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Fix#108

College data: reading documents we had already found

Common Data Sets and class profiles we had already found for about 200 colleges now get read, so more of their own figures can appear on their pages.

Data#107

College-reported admissions: 11 new figures from colleges' own sites

11 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

New feature#106

Cost by family income

Each college's cost is now shown across family incomes, with the colleges' own published promises and whether merit aid is on offer, and an estimate of where need-based aid ends on review copies of the site.

Plans#104

The planner, redesigned: a plan

A plan to make the planner simpler and easier to find, with Plan in the main menu, your colleges sorted from your numbers, a coach that says when another test would help, and a color-coded calendar for parents.

New feature#103

The planner: from the first list to the deposit

Every student's page gets a Plan tab that walks the family through six stages, from sorting the first list to reading aid offers and choosing, with dated tasks, a calendar feed, and a parent's view that helps without nagging.

Behind the scenes#102

Tidying up after the analytics install

Removes the setup guides the PostHog installer left in the repository, now that the site's own analytics design replaces them.

Behind the scenes#101

Usage measured without cookies, and a privacy page that says how

The site now measures how search, Explore, profiles, Compare, and the score checker are used, with no cookies, no recordings, and never a student's own numbers; a new Privacy page explains it in plain language.

Behind the scenes#100

Usage analytics with PostHog

The site now counts how people use search and Compare, and reports page errors, so we can see what helps and fix what breaks.

Improvement#99

Household and Explore respond on the click

Switching between people in your household and opening Explore now respond the moment you click, with the page's shape shown first and the content filling in, and signed-in pages make far fewer trips to the database.

Improvement#98

Faster search, and site updates that can't fail on the database

The search box now answers as you type from a small index in your browser, and the site reads its college data from the files it ships with, so an update is live when it's deployed and a busy or paused database can't take the public pages down.

Plans#97

A plan for the planner

A plan for a Plan tab on every student's page that walks a family from the first list of colleges to the deposit, with a parent's view the whole way.

Improvement#96

Demonstrated interest, named and explained

The admissions factor colleges call "level of applicant's interest" now shows as demonstrated interest, with a glossary entry explaining what counts as interest and what to do about it.

Plans#94

A plan for an iPhone app

A plan for a native iPhone app with everything the site does, fed by a new screen API so the app shows the same numbers, words, and citations as the site.

New feature#95

Your household, by name, with one list each

The household page is now the family's home base: add a parent or a student by name, see everyone by name, open each person's list and numbers, and switch updates on or off per college instead of following.

Plans#92

A plan for documents a person has to open

A plan for reading the public documents our automated readers aren't allowed to fetch, starting with high school profiles, at a person's pace and with a person watching.

Fix#91

High school search works again

Searching for a high school, on the High schools page and in your profile, returned no results; it now finds schools right away.

Plans#90

Planned: deadlines, requirements, and this season's application trends from the Common App

A plan to show every Common App member college's deadlines, fees, essay and recommendation requirements, and this cycle's test policy, plus how the application season is going nationally months before federal data, once Common App agrees to the use.

New feature#89

High schools

A page for every U.S. high school, public and private, with AP and dual-enrollment access, graduation and college-going rates, and how each compares with its state.

Data#88

College-reported admissions: 32 new figures from colleges' own sites

32 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

New feature#87

Distance from home: an address for your household, a filter on Explore, and miles on your list

Save your household's home address once and the site says how far each college is, filters Explore to colleges within a chosen number of miles of home, and shows the same distances to the student and the parents who see their list. Households now hold up to six people, and an account is in one household at a time.

Improvement#86

Sign in with a password, and easier family invitations

Sign in with your email and a password (an emailed link is still an option), send a household invitation again with a new link, and link a student you added to their own account at any time.

Fix#85

Sign-in links now work from your email app

Tapping the sign-in link in your email now signs you in, whichever app or browser opens it.

Improvement#84

Comparing colleges the way profiles work: an overview and a page per topic

Compare now opens with the biggest differences and a card per topic, each with a bar per college and a one-sentence takeaway, and every topic has its own page; the full table is one tap away with a differences-only switch.

New feature#83

Accounts: keep your list, your numbers, and your family in one place

Sign in with an emailed link to keep a college list sorted into Reach, Target, and Likely, save your scores and GPA once, link parents and students in a household, and follow colleges to hear when their numbers change.

Plans#82

Planned: where the students went, what the pandemic did, and which colleges are really online

Three new plans on the roadmap — a national trend study showing where undergraduates went over ten years and whether the pandemic sped that up or reversed it, a stored measure of how much of each college is online, and which states gain first-year students from other states.

Fix#81

Site updates survive a data publish

A site update that lands while new data is being published now waits a moment and tries again, instead of failing.

New feature#80

National trends: how college is changing across the country

A new Trends page with six studies of how four-year colleges changed, top-10 lists of the colleges that changed most, and a page for every athletic conference and every state.

Behind the scenes#79

A set way to build each part of the roadmap

Each section of the roadmap is now built from a written plan, split into pieces that are built side by side and checked together.

Fix#78

Explore: the LGBTQ+ filters' explanations work cleanly

The ⓘ explanations on Explore's LGBTQ+ campus-life filters now sit beside each filter instead of inside it, which stopped an error on every Explore page.

Plans#77

Plans: Campus life is built; next, reading every college's pages accurately

Campus life is built and leaves the roadmap; a new plan under Later covers what we'll fix before reading fraternity, faith, and LGBTQ+ pages at every college.

Data#76

Campus life: Greek councils from 25 more colleges' own pages

Campus life now shows facts checked on 30 colleges' own pages, adding Florida State, Auburn, LSU, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Berkeley, Yale, and others, and holds back kinds of facts that weren't reliable enough.

Data#75

Campus life: facts from 12 more colleges' own pages

Campus life now shows facts checked on 24 colleges' own pages, up from 12, including Greek councils, LGBTQ+ centers, and policies at Ohio State, Georgia, Duke, UNC, and others.

New feature#74

Links, names, and looks: each college's own pages, accounts, short names, colors, and mark

Profiles now link to each college's website, admissions, application, campus visit, and aid pages and its social accounts; search understands short names like "UGA" and "Vandy"; and profiles carry the college's own colors and mark.

Data#73

Campus life: faith communities, Greek chapters, LGBTQ+ support, and state laws

Campus life now lists faith communities, fraternity and sorority chapters, and LGBTQ+ centers and policies from national organizations' own lists, each credited, plus state laws in nine states and facts checked on 12 colleges' own pages.

Fix#71

Roadmap: three ideas pointed at plans that had just been built

Three idea pages on the roadmap listed "builds on" plans that were finished minutes before the ideas landed, which tripped the site's own checks; the lists now name only plans still in progress.

Behind the scenes#70

College data updates can pass their checks

The automatic checks no longer assume the site has Common Data Set records for exactly four colleges, so updates that add colleges can be reviewed and published.

Fix#69

Next year's price: public colleges read as public

Next year's price from a public college's Common Data Set now always uses its in-state and out-of-state tuition, never the cell meant for private colleges.

Data#68

College-reported admissions: 3 new figures from colleges' own sites

3 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Fix#67

College data agent: telling a report's table cells apart

The agent now gets each Common Data Set cell's full description, such as in-state versus out-of-state or need-based versus merit aid, so it no longer confuses cells that share a question.

Fix#65

College data agent: fixes from reading its first real documents

The agent read four colleges' Common Data Sets end to end for the first time; its own checks then caught how it misread small percentages and a few other details, which are now fixed before anything was published.

Fix#64

College data agent: reading colleges' reports within the API's limits

The agent that reads colleges' Common Data Sets asked for its answers in a shape too large for the API to accept; it now uses a compact one, so documents found on the next run are actually read.

Data#72

Campus life: religious life, Greek life, and LGBTQ+ life

Campus life now shows each college's religious affiliation, fraternity and sorority participation where the college reports it, and federal gender-identity counts with what they do and don't mean.

Fix#63

College data agent: a fix from its first live run

The agent that reads colleges' own reports stopped partway through its first live run because of a cost-tracking mismatch; it now runs through, still refusing any model it can't price.

Plans#61

Ideas: seven fresh directions, and a place on the roadmap for them

The roadmap gains an Ideas section with seven directions that aren't planned yet, written up from a look at competing college sites and at guide-and-advisor sites in other fields, so the owner can judge each one.

New feature#60

Newer figures from colleges: the whole Common Data Set, read once

Colleges' own Common Data Sets now feed GPA, early decision, wait lists, test policy, class sizes, transfer admissions, aid rules, next year's price, and a year-newer enrollment and graduation picture, starting with four colleges, with the pipeline that will read every college's document once.

Plans#59

Plans: links to each college, its social accounts, searching by nickname, and its own colors

Plans for linking every profile to the college's website, admissions, application, aid, and campus-visit pages and its social accounts, for finding a college by a short name like "UGA", and for showing each college's own colors and mark on its profile.

Improvement#58

College figures publish as soon as they pass their checks

Figures that pass their checks now publish on their own, a few checks learned from the first live runs, and discovery is tighter and faster.

Plans#57

Plans: reading every Common Data Set once, and nine features built from it

Plans for reading each college's Common Data Set in full on a single visit, and for the nine features that data makes possible, from in-state admit rates to CSS Profile requirements.

Data#56

College-reported admissions: 4 new figures from colleges' own sites

4 colleges now show a newer admissions figure taken from their own Common Data Set or class profile.

Plans#55

Plans: national trends, top-10 lists, conferences, and states

Eight new plans grow the national-trends idea into a family, with the first numbers for each, from test-optional's spread to the Pell graduation gap, plus pages by athletic conference and by state.

New feature#54

The newest admissions figures, everywhere, and the first 22 are in

The newest admissions figures a college has published are now the ones the site shows everywhere, with the source in each value's ⓘ instead of tags; 22 colleges have them already, and collecting them costs about a tenth of what the first run did.

New feature#50

Newer admissions figures, straight from the colleges

An automated reader now collects each college's newest published admissions figures, checks them, and shows them on the profile next to the federal numbers, with the exact quote and link.

Fix#48

Search results on top, and a tidier Over time page

The home page's search results no longer hide behind the numbers below them, and a college's Over time page now has the same side list as the other profile pages.

Improvement#47

A shorter college profile: overview cards and a page per topic

Each college's profile now opens with one card per topic and a page for each, instead of one page that ran to 25 screens; nothing was removed, and every number keeps its citation.

Data#46

Majors and earnings by major

Every college now shows what its students major in and, where reported, what graduates in each major earn one and four years after finishing.

Plans#45

Plans: a shorter college profile, with a page per topic

A new roadmap page explains why each college's profile has grown to 25 screens and how it will become a short overview of topic cards with a page for each topic.

Fix#44

Wave 2 history goes live: history publishes in batches

The Over time charts and home-state maps for wave 2 now reach the live site. History and detail files upload in batches instead of one swap that had grown too big.

Fix#43

Wave 2 data goes live: the dataset publishes in batches

The data publish after wave 2 timed out because the dataset outgrew a single upload. It now uploads in batches, and the publish's database checks really stop it when a migration is missing.

Plans#42

Plans: follow colleges and get an email when their numbers change

A new roadmap page describes following colleges, one email per data release summarizing what changed and for which years, and a public "What changed" panel on every profile.

Data#41

Where students come from, what happens to them, and what colleges spend

Seven new kinds of federal data on every college. Where first-years come from, transfer students in and out, 8-year results for every student who starts and how many finish in 4, 6, or 8 years, graduation rates for Pell recipients and by race, spending and endowment per student, and full-time faculty share and pay.

Plans#40

Guide: how the database is shaped for what's coming

A written guide on why the public college data stays as published JSON documents while accounts, lists, and other user data get ordinary database tables with access rules.

Plans#39

Plans: accounts, planning tools, high school context, and the business

Thirteen new roadmap pages in four themes describe how the site will remember your work, help a family plan and pay, add high school context, and measure and fund itself.

Data#38

Student-to-faculty ratio, and a new Academics section

Profiles show each college's student-to-faculty ratio against every other college and how it has changed since 2009, and Explore can sort and filter by it.

Fix#37

Fix: new data sources no longer break a site update

A site update that adds a new data source no longer fails when it goes live before that source's data does, which is what held back the sports and programs release.

Data#36

Sports, ROTC, and campus programs

Profiles show each college's NCAA division and conference, recent conference moves, ROTC, study abroad, undergraduate research, and AP credit; Explore can filter by all of them.

Improvement#35

Clearer test score bars and a full-price column for net price

Test score bars zoom in on the range that matters and label the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the net price chart now shows what families without grants pay.

Data#34

Campus profile: setting, research tier, designations, and a map

Profiles show whether a college is in a city, suburb, town, or rural area, its research tier, and designations like HBCU or Hispanic-Serving; Explore gets matching filters and a map view, and Home three new starting points.

Data#33

Admission factors: what colleges look at, and how policies changed

Profiles show what each college weighs in admission, from GPA and essays to legacy status, plus a new list of policy changes, and Home adds a fact on colleges dropping legacy.

Data#32

Housing and policies: campus housing, application fees, tuition guarantees

A new Campus life section shows each college's housing, and profiles, Explore, and Compare add the application fee, tuition guarantees, and Promise programs.

New feature#31

Release notes

This page, which lists every change to the site with a short summary and a full page of notes for each.

Behind the scenes#30

Clearer errors when a data publish fails

A failed data publish now reports the real error, rather than always blaming a missing database migration.

Data#29

Borrowing over time

A new chart shows how the share of students with a federal loan changed since 2008–09, and Explore can sort by the 10-year change.

Data#28

Loans and repayment: who borrows, debt by background, and repayment status

How many students borrow, how much debt students from different backgrounds leave with, and how former students are doing three years into repayment.

Plans#27

Plans: national trends

A spec plans trend studies across all colleges, starting with how acceptance rates for men and women have shifted since 2004.

Data#26

Admissions detail: rates for men and women, true medians, and ACT sections

Acceptance rates for men and women, each college's true median test scores, and ACT English and Math ranges.

Plans#25

Plans: LGBTQ+ life

A third campus-life spec plans how to show LGBTQ+ centers, inclusive policies, conduct rules, and state laws, with strict rules for sensitive facts.

Fix#24

Median debt chart fixes

The median debt chart no longer breaks under "All years", and its last point now matches the headline above it.

Data#23

Student body: men and women, part-time, and students 25+

Profiles, Explore, and Compare now show each college's balance of men and women, its share of part-time students, and its share of students 25 and older.

Improvement#22

The Roadmap on phones

The Roadmap is now in the phone More menu; before, phones had no way to reach it.

Improvement#21

Shorter school profiles on phones

Deep dives on phone profiles fold behind Show buttons, cutting a profile's length by almost a third.

New feature#20

The Roadmap

A public roadmap lists every planned feature with a complexity rating, and each full spec is readable on the site.

Improvement#19

A redesign for phones

A bottom tab bar, swipeable rows, compact search results, and no more sideways scrolling on phones.

Plans#18

Plans: public data not yet on the site

Nineteen specs, one per public data source, plan what to add next in four waves, from files the site already downloads to newer figures from colleges.

Behind the scenes#17

Re-running checks by hand

The Verify checks can now be started by hand, after GitHub skipped them (and a deploy) for one merge.

New feature#16

Trend indicators: cost, applications, diversity, and selectivity

Four up, steady, or down indicators show how each college changed over 10 years, and you can search, filter, and compare by them.

Behind the scenes#15

Publishing history in batches

The larger history data now publishes in batches, after a single publish timed out on the database.

New feature#14

Trends over time, part 2: scores, students, outcomes, Explore, and Compare

History for test scores, students, and graduation joins every profile, and 10-year changes come to Explore and Compare.

Plans#13

Plans: religious life and Greek life

Two specs plan how to show faith communities and fraternity and sorority life at every college, starting from a UT Austin case study.

New feature#12

Trends over time, part 1: cost, aid, and admissions history

Year-by-year history for cost, aid, and admissions on every profile, plus a "What's changed" section on Home.

Behind the scenes#11

Deployment fixes for the pre-release site

Preview builds stop failing on an empty setting, Node is pinned to match CI, and the pre-release site is documented.

Behind the scenes#9

Publishing to production, and pages that refresh on publish

Merged data publishes to production automatically, and the site regenerates its pages as soon as new data lands.

Behind the scenes#8

Serving the data from a database

The site can now read its dataset from Supabase, while the reviewed JSON files in git stay the source of truth.

New feature#7

The Data tab

A new Data tab shows how current each dataset is, when the next federal releases are due, and where every number comes from.

Behind the scenes#6

One workspace per coding session

Each AI coding session now works in its own git worktree, so parallel sessions can't switch branches or edit files under each other.

New feature#5

The source and year of every number

Every value now traces to its source, release year, and method, and automatic checks fail when it doesn't.

Plans#4

Plans: trends over time

Two specs plan year-by-year history, covering how far back each figure goes and how trends should appear on the site.

Data#3

Newest federal data: fall 2024 admissions and 2023–24 prices

Admissions, aid, and price figures move up a year to the newest IPEDS release, which the data sync had been missing.

New feature#2

Cost and outcomes, financial aid, and source citations

What college really costs, who gets aid, and what it leads to, on every page, with every number linked to its source.

New feature#1

Quad v0.2: a new look and every 4-year U.S. college

The site becomes "Quad", with a full redesign and real federal data on 1,893 four-year colleges instead of a 20-school sample.