What's new
- Profile → top of the page: links to the college's own pages: Website, Admissions, Apply, Visit (where you book a campus tour; found for 1,390 colleges), and Financial aid. Next to them, the college's Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn in their own colors, for 1,758 colleges, and one ⓘ that says where each came from.
- Profile → topic pages: a Website link in the bar at the top, so the college's site is one tap away from any page. The Cost page adds the financial aid office and veterans' benefits; the Students page adds the disability services office.
- Compare: a Website row, one link per college.
- Search: type the name people actually use. "UGA", "Vandy", "Georgia Tech", "Ole Miss", "Pitt", and "USC" (both of them) find the right college, with the matched name shown beside the result so you know why it's there. Explore's search understands them too.
- Colors and marks: profiles, cards, and search results now use each college's own colors (1,316 colleges) and, for 1,119 of them, the icon the college uses for its own website in place of the lettered tile. They're decoration only: charts keep the site's own colors.
- Data page: Wikidata and Wikipedia's college color data join the list of sources, with a paragraph on colors and marks: whose they are, that they imply no endorsement, and how a college can ask us to remove its mark.
Behind the scenes
- The links are the ones each college reports to the federal college directory (IPEDS). The visit pages, the accounts some colleges list only on their homepage, and the icons come from one polite visit to each college's homepage and admissions page. The same visit checks every stored link, and a link is removed only after two visits find it gone.
- Social accounts and other names come from Wikidata, matched by each college's federal ID, so no name guessing is involved. Colors come from Wikipedia's table of college colors, which cites each college's own brand guide.
- Short names come from four sources: the federal directory, Wikidata, each college's web address, and a short hand-picked list for the cases the others miss (like putting the University of Miami first for "Miami").
- Every new value cites its source in the ⓘ popover, like every number on the site.
- It all refreshes on its own each month: accounts, visit pages, colors, and marks are re-read, broken links are retired, and the changes arrive as a data update like any other.