Compare colleges on the data that actually decides it
Every comparison here is built from two public datasets and nothing else: each school’s own Common Data Set filing and the federal College Scorecard. No rankings, no editorial scoring, no sponsored placement.
Harvard vs Yale
Harvard admits 4.2% and Yale 4.75%. Compare 2025-26 admissions factors, real cost after aid ($19k vs $24k), class size and alumni earnings.
Brown vs Dartmouth
Brown admits 5.4% and Dartmouth 6%. Compare 2025-26 admissions factors, aid by family income, Greek life and graduate earnings.
Princeton vs Harvard
Princeton admits 4.4% and Harvard 4.2%, but Princeton costs $12,938 less after aid. Compare 2025-26 admissions factors, aid and earnings.
Boston College vs Boston University
BU admits 12.8% and Boston College 16.2%, but BC graduates earn $20,699 more. Compare cost after aid, size, admissions factors and outcomes.
Vanderbilt vs Rice
Vanderbilt admits 5.38% and Rice 8%. Compare cost after aid, class sizes, Greek life and graduate earnings from 2025-26 data.
Tufts vs Boston College
Tufts admits 10.8% and Boston College 16.2%. Compare cost after aid, admissions factors, graduate earnings and economic mobility.
Penn vs Cornell
Penn admits 5.4% and Cornell 8.37%, at net prices $9 apart. Compare admissions factors, class sizes, aid by income and earnings.
Berkeley vs UCLA
UCLA admits 9.4% and Berkeley 11.5%. Compare real cost by family income, what each campus weighs in your application, and graduate earnings.
Where these numbers come from
Two datasets, and one canonical source per metric — never blended, because they disagree. Harvard’s acceptance rate is 4.2% in one and 3.65% in the other; its student–faculty ratio is 11:1 in one and 7:1 in the other. Picking whichever number flatters a point is how comparison pages end up contradicting themselves.
Common Data Set 2025–2026 Each school’s own annual filing. It owns admissions, the declared weight given to every application factor, class size, retention and aid policy. It is the only source that states, in a school’s own words, whether it considers demonstrated interest or legacy at all.
College Scorecard Federal data covering roughly 1,800 colleges. It owns net price, graduate debt, earnings ten years out and economic mobility — none of which the Common Data Set reports. Its breadth is what makes a national median meaningful.
What we won’t do
A blank field means the school didn’t report it, not that the answer is no. Both Harvard and Yale leave the no-loan-policy field empty and both genuinely have one, so we omit the claim rather than assert an absence. Where a figure looks wrong or a dataset is measuring something other than what its label suggests, we leave it out and say so on the page.
Nothing here is ranked. Two schools that differ by a tenth of a percentage point are reported as indistinguishable, because they are.
Build your own comparison
FitFinder runs these comparisons across every school on your list, against your own profile rather than a national median.
Join the waitlist →