Reference Library
Reference Library
Essential Resources to Begin your Journey
A comprehensive list of references that deal with college, financial aid and admissions would span dozens of pages. Most families accessing our website are looking for a place to start their journey or a few good tools they can trust, not a library. These references are an essential starting point on your college search journey. To streamline your search, the Reference Library is divided into three major sections and several subsections.
Career Assessments and Guides
So you don’t know what to do for the rest of your life? Join the crowd. Nationwide, somewhere between 25 and 50% of freshman begin college with an “Undecided” major. Here are a few tools to help you along the way. As with all assessments, you can take the tests on your own, but the Guru strongly advises that you work with us to interpret the results and use them to refine your college search.
Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type; Tieger, Baron and Tieger; 2014; Paperback, Kindle
Online – Via Naviance.
Do What You Are is an integral part of the Naviance system. If your school district doesn’t have Naviance, you can take the assessment online (there is a charge) or buy the book by the same name.
YouScience is one of the leading and most scientifically rigorous aptitude and career assessments available. There is a cost for the test, but for students that don’t even know where to begin or what they’re good at, this is perhaps the broadest assessment available outside of a career counseling business.
What Color is Your Parachute?: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers ; Bolles, RA; 2019; Paperback
For more than 30 years, this book has been a standard career guide for young adults.
College Guides
No one guide includes information on all 4,500 colleges and universities vying for your consideration, but even the information on the 400 or so schools in most guides can be overwhelming! The Guru strongly recommend using these guides as a starting point to find a few of the more well-known schools they discuss and then go to each school’s website to find more detailed information on the courses they offer in your areas of interest, admissions deadlines and requirements, and other more general information like student life, athletics and dining options. After you’ve identified a few schools, the Guru will work with you to fill out a complete list of schools that fit your specific interests and goals.
Fiske Guide to Colleges 2024; Fiske, EB; Paperback
Details on just under 400 schools. “Overlap schools” – schools in the same niche market – allow you to discover other schools of interest.
The Best 390 Colleges, 2025 ; The Princeton Review; Paperback
This comprehensive guide to the nation's best colleges provides in-depth profiles on schools, best-of lists by interest, and tons of helpful student-driven detail.
College Factual
(website)
College Factual is all about sorting and ranking. This is my favorite tool to find schools that have well-regarded programs in just about any subject. You can sort information by major, by sport or by school.
Niche (website)
College Niche gives student rankings on 19 categories from Academics, to Drug Safety and Weather. Individual comments give detailed discussion for each category. Click on each category and check out the detailed objective information after the comments. For instance, if you want to know how many students graduated last year in Mechanical Engineering, go to "Major" and scroll to the bottom.
College Data (website)
If your create a free account on this website, you can search for schools that match detailed criteria, save your results, explore your chances of getting admitted... There's a lot of information. I like to use the 411 search engine to get explore options. This is my go-to web tool for students interested in pursuing their interests in multiple subjects.
College Match Guru Tables
These reference tools are unique to CMG and will help you quickly locate detailed financial data on more than 1700 colleges.
College Admissions Statistics 2013-14
Colleges accept more students than will actually enroll. Acceptance rates and SAT or ACT scores are measures of selectivity. Admissions yields and retention rates are measures of desirability. The table also includes student-faculty ratios.
Financial Aid Grants and Loans 2013-14
Which schools give the most grants? The least in loans? What’s the average debt at graduation? All figures are now on a per-capita basis. This means they are averages based on all full-time, first time undergraduate students and not just averages for students with financial aid.
Cost of Attendance and Net Price By Income 2013-14
How much will it really cost? The table lists Cost of Attendance and Net Price averages for 5 income levels.
Institutional Endowments & Financial Aid Policies 2013
Which schools have money? How do endowment dollars translate to a school’s ability to meet their students’ financial need?
Undergraduate Retention and Graduation Rates 2013-4
Do students tend to stay at a given college or do they move to another school? Do they graduate on time? What’s the student to faculty ration? This table lists statistics for both public and private institutions along with the number of undergrads and the total cost of admission.
Undergraduate First-Time Enrollment and Transfers, Fall 2013
The number of students admitted to a school as a percentage of total enrollment can indicate how easy it is to transfer to that school. More importantly, if a significant number of each class is made up of transfer students, there will be less social problems for transfer students entering the school.
Financial Aid Guides and EFC Calculators
Right after finding a college, you’ll need to figure out how you’re going to afford going there. Here’s a good tutorial on financial aid forms and a few different EFC (Expected Family Contribution) calculators.
Paying for College Without Going Broke,2025: Everything You Need to Maximize Financial Aid and Afford College ; The Princeton Review; 2025; Paperback
Reviews FAFSA and CSS Profile forms line by line. Helpful financial planning section. FAFSA and the Profile were updated in 2024, so this edition is an essential upgrade!
finaid's SAI Calculator
The most current FAFSA EFC calculator can generate estimates for schools using FAFSA schools OR the CSS Profile.
Federal Student Aid’s Loan Simulator
Colleges may include student loans in you Financial Aid package, but loans are hardly aid – just deferred costs. Use this simulator to estimate your monthly student loan payments and choose a loan repayment option that best meets your needs.
Quick Links
Financial aid forms and registration for the SAT, ACT and AP tests are just a click away. The testing sites also include lists of when the tests are given.
Create a Federal Student ID (FSA) [ Click Here]
Download a FAFSA worksheet [Click Here]
File your FAFSA online [ Click Here ]
File your CSS Profile online [ Click Here ]
The Common App website [ Click Here ]
The Coalition for College website [ Click Here ]
SAT dates [ Click Here ]
ACT dates and registration [ Click Here ]
AP dates [ Click Here ]
Next SAT Test Date:
03/08/25
Next ACT Test Date:
03/08/25
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Recent Blog Posts
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In many ways, seniors are in the cross-hairs of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their financial situations may have changed as the bottom fell out of the stock market. They aren't able to visit colleges to decide between their top choices. Their AP tests in May have been canceled and not rescheduled and the test format and scope have changed. Because things are changing daily, it's more helpful to provided links to dynamic resources than to publish lists of important changes to school policies at any given moment. 1. Visiting Schools and Deposit Deadlines NACAC, the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, has posted a searchable database that lists whether or not college are open to visitors, are hosting any admission events and whether or not they have changed their deposit deadlines. The database is searchable by college, location or status. Many colleges are developing resources to aid their accepted students. Smaller schools are doing Video conferences with admissions officers, many schools are providing Zoom meetings. Seniors should check with their school's admissions offices to see what resources are available. 2. Test Optional Policy Changes At the moment, a dozen schools that are not usually test optional will go test optional, at least for their 2021 applications. That number is likely to increase during the spring and summer. Fair Test keeps a current list of all test-optional schools and you can use this resource to see the list of schools that will be temporarily test optional. 3. AP Test Requirements If you're still confused about what the College Board is doing about AP tests or when the online tests will be administered, please use this link to AP Central for a detailed explanation of what you'll be required to know for each AP course. At this time, the test dates have not been published, so check the link often. One of testing partners is providing free on-demand AP tutoring in almost every subject. Please contact me if you are interested. If you have any specific questions, please know that College Match Guru is here to help! Give me a call or send me an email and I'll do all I can to help during this troubled time!
The College Board announced today that AP tests will not be given in their usual proctored format this year because of the Corona virus. Instead, students wishing to take the AP test will be offered the opportunity to take the tests at home. For most courses, the test will only include sections that should have already been covered in class. For the Art-related courses, students will need to submit a smaller number of works and investigations. AP tests are important because most colleges and universities will give students credit for AP test scores in the 4 and 5 range. This can allow students to substitute other classes so they can explore areas they may find interesting or to graduate early. AP tests are an indication that students have mastered their course work and most colleges consider AP courses in their admissions decisions. Art works and investigations will be due May 26th; testing dates for other courses have not yet been published. For more information, go to the College Board website https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/about-ap/news-changes/coronavirus-update .
Here in sunny Bucks County, spring is well underway. Everything from crocuses to Forsythia are in bloom. Of course, we're also on emergency lock down with non-essential businesses closed, including restaurants, theaters, and many small businesses. With that as a backdrop, COVID-19, the corona virus, has had a tremendous impact on college admissions too. Several colleges are moving their acceptance deadlines from the traditional May 1st to June 1st. This is to give accepted students more time to visit and make their decisions after the crisis has (hopefully!) passed. The list of schools affected is ever-changing, so if you are a senior looking to postpone your decision, please contact your schools' admissions offices to see if they are still on the May 1st deadline. A phone call never hurts! Many schools that haven't officially changed their admissions deadline will give you an extension if you call and ask. If you were planning to make your decision after visiting again during Accepted Student Days, you may be out of luck. Most schools have notified students they have canceled their ASDs. So how can you get more information to make your decision? Here are a few suggestions: Take a virtual tour -- go to websites like CampusReel or YouniversityTV that offer over 300 campus guided tours. Login to the school's Facebook page and join conversations with accepted students and upperclassmen Check out the schools' YouTube channels. Often the content here is superior to the schools' own web pages and can give you different insight on what the schools have to offer. Contact Admissions -- see if they can hook you up with a student in your intended major for a conversation via Skype or FaceTime. Go to the college's website and do some research. Check out the schools' course catalogs and compare the course descriptions from one program to the others on your list. Make sure you are getting (and reading!) emails that the colleges and universities are sending you. Check your college web-portals often. This is likely to offer you the most up-to-date, breaking news from the schools on your accepted list. Above all, don't panic! If you have specific questions about one school vs. another, make a list and call Admissions to get answers. If you're just waiting for an opportunity to visit a few campuses to confirm your choice, you should be able to postpone your decision until you've had your chance to get back on campus.
