The four ways people check admissions data
You can ask a chat assistant, read an admissions blog, open a free Common Data Set viewer, or use PrepToDone. These are different instruments, not better and worse versions of one instrument — the comparison below is structural: where each one's numbers come from and what is attached to them. Every claim in our column links to the live page where you can check it.
The comparison.
| Item | PrepToDone | General AI chat assistants | Admissions consulting blogs | Free CDS viewers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where the numbers come from | Federal publications — IPEDS and College Scorecard, from the U.S. Department of Education — plus each school’s own Common Data Set filing, linked to the original PDF where we render its figures. Check this → | Sources can vary from answer to answer, and a link to the original document is not guaranteed. | Secondary sources: the figure was published somewhere else first, so the same admissions cycle can carry different numbers across outlets. | The CDS filings themselves, displayed as filed. |
| Early Decision figures | Computed only from C1 and C21 of the same filing, labelled with the cycle, and compared against a defined group — the rest of that cycle’s applicant pool, never the blended overall rate. Check this → | Answers are not stored outside the chat session, so there is no figure of record to check a later answer against. | Republished figures; we link the original filing so any number we state can be checked against the document it came from. | Raw C21 counts as filed; combining them with C1 into a comparison is left to the reader. |
| When data is missing or skewed | A fixed caveat about recruited athletes, legacy applicants and QuestBridge travels with every Early Decision figure. Unpublished values are stated as not published — never estimated. “The school runs no ED round” is reported as a different fact from “the school did not publish its counts.” Check this → | Whether a caveat appears depends on how the question is asked; it is not attached to the figure itself. | Caveats are at each author’s discretion, article by article. | Blank cells are shown blank; the filing’s own footnotes are the only qualification. |
| Your school list | Figures are read against the school list you saved — the same list the free score and the paid review both run on. Check this → | No list persists outside the chat session. | No user list — every reader gets the same article. | Display only; the filings are not coupled to a list of yours. |
| Aid for international students | Where a school files section H6 of its Common Data Set, we show how many international undergraduates it funded and the average award, labelled with the cycle and linked to the filing. A school that awards nothing is stated as exactly that — a different fact from “the school did not publish.” Check this → | Sources can vary from answer to answer, and a link to the school’s own filing is not guaranteed. | Secondary sources; institutional aid for international students is a per-school filing item, covered at each author’s discretion. | The H6 items as filed, displayed raw. |
| What it costs | A free profile score with no account required, and a $49 one-time Decision Doc that includes 3 re-scores within 90 days. Check this → | Free tiers exist; paid tiers vary by provider. | Free to read. | Free. |
The three non-PrepToDone columns describe categories, not any specific product, and describe how each category is structured — not how well any of them performs. We publish no measurements of other tools, so we make no claims that would need them.
Why the same number differs across outlets.
Admissions figures exist in two forms. The primary form is the document a school files itself — its Common Data Set — and the federal series built from what schools report to the U.S. Department of Education (IPEDS and College Scorecard). The secondary form is everything downstream: articles, forum threads, and answers that quote the primary form, or quote each other. Nothing is wrong with secondary sources — this page is one — but each hop can change the cycle, the rounding, or which pool a rate describes, which is why the same school's "acceptance rate" can honestly differ from one outlet to the next.
Our rule is to make the hop checkable: where we state an Early Decision figure, we compute it from sections C1 and C21 of one filing, label the cycle, and link the school's original PDF next to the number — so the page can be checked against the document rather than against us. See it done for one school's Early Decision round (the live example behind the table's verify links: https://preptodone.com/blog/cornell-early-decision-acceptance-rate-2026).
One caveat is attached to every Early Decision figure we publish, verbatim: "Early Decision pools are not a random slice of the applicant pool — recruited athletes, legacy applicants and QuestBridge matches are concentrated in them. These figures describe a differently composed group of applicants, so neither the rate nor the ratio is a number you can apply to your own chances."
Where a school publishes nothing, we say so instead of filling the cell — and a school that runs no Early Decision round at all is recorded as exactly that, not as missing data.
Use more than one of these.
A chat assistant is good at explaining; a blog is good at narrative; a CDS viewer is the raw record. What PrepToDone adds is the join: the published numbers, read against a school list that is yours and persists — free to try, with the method in the open.
Category descriptions are structural and refer to no specific product or provider. Results are data-based estimates and do not guarantee admission.