About Planning4College
Most families make the biggest financial decision of their lives with worse information than they would get buying a used car.
The problem we built this for
Two things happen to families over and over, and both are expensive.
The first is sticker shock. A college publishes a tuition figure of $60,000 and the family crosses it off the list that evening. But almost nobody pays the sticker price. What matters is the net price — what students actually pay after grants and scholarships are subtracted. At selective private colleges the gap between the two can be $40,000 a year, and it is widest for the families who assume they cannot afford to apply. Schools get ruled out that would have cost less than the in-state public.
The second is borrowing blind. A student signs for loans without ever being shown the monthly payment on the other side, or what graduates of that specific program actually earn. The number that would have changed the decision arrives years after the decision was made.
Neither problem is caused by families being careless. They are caused by the useful numbers being buried, scattered across federal datasets, or quietly replaced by a ranking that measures something else entirely.
How it works
You answer a short questionnaire — budget, grades and test scores, what you want to study, how far from home, how big a campus, and the parts of campus life that matter to you. It takes about two minutes and needs no account.
We score every college in the catalog against those answers and return a balanced shortlist: the schools that genuinely fit, the ones you are very likely to get into, and the aspirational reaches — labelled as reaches, not dressed up. Each card shows why it is there, and what the school would actually cost you rather than what it advertises.
You can save colleges, compare them side by side on cost, debt and outcomes, keep private notes, and track application deadlines. All of that is free, and all of it works without signing up.
What we will and will not do
Built on federal data
Cost, admissions, enrolment, earnings, debt and repayment figures come from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard — the same data the government collects from institutions directly. Where a school reports nothing, we say so rather than filling the gap with an estimate. Where a figure is an average, we say that too.
Matching, not ranking
We publish no “best colleges” list. A ranking answers a question nobody asked: it tells you which school scored highest on someone else’s weighting of prestige, selectivity and spending. The useful question is which schools fit this student, at this budget, for this subject — and the honest answer differs for every family.
No pay-to-play, no sponsored results
No college can pay to appear in your results, to rank higher within them, or to be described more kindly. There are no sponsored slots, no affiliate links to schools, and no advertising from institutions. If a school is a long shot for you, the card says so. If it is over your budget, the card says that too.
Privacy first
We do not sell personal data, and we collect as little as the tools can function on — the audience here includes minors, and that shapes every decision about what to store. The matcher needs no account at all. If you create one it is a passwordless email link, and what we keep is your email address, the colleges you saved, and whatever you typed into your own private notes. The optional income question exists only to estimate your cost more accurately; it is not stored on our servers. The privacy policy sets out the details.
Free, and not a funnel
The matcher, the comparison tool, the net price figures and the loan calculator are free to use with no account and no payment. We are not a lead-generation business dressed as a guidance tool.
Who runs it
Planning4College is operated by Planning4College LLC, a company registered in Massachusetts. We are a small, independent operation — not a publisher, not a ranking service, and not owned by or affiliated with any college, lender or admissions consultancy.
Questions, corrections and criticism are all welcome: get in touch. If you have spotted a figure that looks wrong, we especially want to hear it.
Start with your own numbers
The fastest way to see whether any of this is useful is to try it.
Or browse colleges by state to see net prices without answering anything, and read the FAQ if you would rather know how it works first.