What's new
- Profile → Campus life (new section): how many beds a college has, roughly how many per 100 undergrads compared with the median college, whether every first-year must live on campus, and meal plans. Religious life, Greek life, and campus services will join this section later.
- Profile → Admissions: the application fee ("$50 to apply" or "No application fee").
- Profile → Cost & outcomes: "Tuition guarantee" and "Part of a Promise program" badges, with what each means.
- Profile → Over time: housing capacity and the application fee (after inflation) back to 2001–02.
- Explore: a "Housing & policies" filter for colleges where first-years live on campus (55), with no application fee (804), or with a tuition guarantee (146).
- Compare: rows for the application fee, beds, the live-on rule, tuition guarantee, and Promise program.
- Glossary: housing capacity, the live-on requirement, application fee, tuition guarantee, and Promise program.
Behind the scenes
- From the federal Institutional Characteristics survey for 2023–24, the same year as the site's prices. No existing value changed.
- Housing capacity can include graduate housing, so beds per 100 undergrads is shown as a rough guide, and there's no "room for every undergrad" badge until it can be checked against colleges' own reports.
- "First-years must live on campus" is the federal survey's strict rule (no exceptions), which only 55 colleges meet; many more expect it with exceptions.
- Changes in these policies over time will appear with the "events" log that comes with admission factors, next.
Fourth of the five wave 1 specs: housing-and-policies.md.