College Search

College Search is a robust feature built upon all of the data CollegePlannerPro has collect for the schools within our database. We have updated the original College Search to be a responsive search providing a great deal of information on each school. 

Accessing College Search 

To launch the College Search, click on "College Search" in the toolbar located on the Colleges tab.

Search Filters

Search Filters can be found on the left side of the screen and cover areas such as location, setting, campus characteristics, academic and financial profile, sports and activities. Selecting the right combination of filters for your needs has never been easier.

Unique to CollegePlannerPro, you can also filter search using the College Lists and Tags you've been developing within the platform for years to help define your search by ever more diverse characteristics.

Saving Search Filters

If you'd like to be able to return to search results later, you can save your search filter for reuse. Simply click the "Save" icon next to the Saved Search filter and a pop-up will open allowing you to set a title and save the search. If an existing search was open, you can select to modify that search or save as a new saved search.

Search Results 

Search Results can be viewed as a list of College Cards, or as a table with the basic college attributes. The list of college cards shows a more complete view of the schools while the table view makes for easier comparisons between collegees.

Within the Card view, you have access to "Ask AI' to learn more details about the college and its surroundings, as well as detailed Cost of Attendance breakdowns, college stats, and a written profile on each school.

Within the table view, data is laid out by column representing the main fields offered in the College Cards. The Cost of Attendance breakdown seen by mouseover in the college card is not available here, nor is the "About this School" description, the school tags, notes, and Ask AI features.

Selecting and Saving Colleges

Select schools by clicking the selector box related to that school. At the top  of the search results page a new function will appear allowing you to add a College Tag to the selected school(s), to add them to a College List (new or existing), or to add them to the My Suggested Colleges List for any of your students. You can perform multiple actions on the same selected colleges, then choose to clear your selections, perform a new search to start over. Refining your search will automatically clear the selected schools.

FAQs

• Will there be additional data points added to this feature?

Yes! The feature will expand and evolve based on the feedback from our members.

• Do my students have access to this feature?

Students do not have access to the College Search feature. It is only available to consultants.

• I heard that Keyword Search would also be possible, but I can't see it. How come?

CollegePlannerPro developed a Keyword Search field that requires calibration before it is released to our full member base. If you would like access to Beta test and provide feedback on the current Keyword Search tool, please send a request to support for access.

• It seems like when I add multiple filters in the same category, it uses an "OR" to show results that fit either criteria. What if I want to see results where ALL of the criteria selected in a category are included?

This problem is one of the areas we are trying to solve with keyword search! Traditionally, search filters are set up in the following manner:

• Selecting multiple items within the same category searches for values that fit ANY of the criteria (location, major, setting, etc). This is because many of the options are mutually exclusive, so setting up an "AND" function where they all must be included would lead to a null result set.
• Selecting items from different categories requires the result to be in ALL of the categories. The goal of filters is to find the schools that fit all of the criteria, so now excluding results makes sense. We have a slight exclusion to this where we will include results with null values in a category to the results so that important schools where we have gaps in our data are not missed. When search is in "Best Match" sort mode, these schools will fall to the end of the results set.
  
  The long and the short of it is that using Keyword Search, where you can contextualize each variable, should get past these limitations. Until keyword search is available, there is one workaround we'd like to suggest to get to a results set where you need AND within a filter category. This example uses Academic Majors as an example:
  • Create your initial filter using all of the criteria for the search and one of the required academic majors. Note that if the major has multiple variations in the dropdown filter, you can select all of the variations that you'd like to apply. This can make a large difference in the results for some majors where different schools report the major in distinct manners.
    ***If one of the majors or other criteria you select is likely to have a much smaller results set than the other, we'd suggest selecting that one first.
  • Select all of the results from this search and save them to a College List with an appropriate name, e.g., "Medium Urban Colleges with Economics Majors."
  • Clear the search filters, and start a new search by loading that list.
  • Now, go to majors and select the second major that must be included in your results. Your original results list will be narrowed down to just schools that also have this second major as well. 

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