Going to college? Use this toolbox to help choose a school and plan the costs

Winston Tan // Shutterstock There’s a lot to consider when deciding where to apply to college. Tuition costs, financial aid offerings, and student loans are high on the list, but so are questions about campus culture and free speech policies. The Hechinger Report created a whole suite of tools with brand-new data that can answer your questions and help you research what life might be like at thousands of colleges and universities across the country. Here is what these tools do and how they can help you. Tuition Tracker shows the difference between a college’s “sticker price” and the actual cost of attending. With a bit of information about the college or colleges you’re interested in, the tool will show you what students who have a similar household income to yours have paid for tuition in the past. Colleges and universities also can be compared based on graduation rate, which shows the likelihood of a student successfully completing their degree on time–a significant factor in affordability. Watch the video explainer on how to use Tuition Tracker. Esta herramienta está disponible en español. The College Welcome Guide is a collection of interactive charts and maps that help you assess campus culture. They list the demographics of faculty and students, services for veterans or students with disabilities, and more. The maps outline the state-level laws that might be most relevant to matriculating students, such as restrictions on teaching Critical Race Theory or laws permitting the use of student IDs when voting. The guide also allows you to compare the graduation rates of up to five schools at the same time. Watch the video explainer on how to use the College Welcome Guide. The Offer Letter Decoder helps college applicants understand the financial aid offer letter they receive from a college or university. The tool scans this letter and identifies what portion of the aid offered is a grant or scholarship that doesn’t need to be paid back and what is a student loan, a debt that has to be paid back. The decoder also can highlight differences between subsidized and unsubsidized loans and identify work-study programs, which require students to take a job on campus. Watch the video explainer on how to use the Offer Letter Decoder. Esta herramienta está disponible en español. The Hechinger Report created the College Closure Tracker to document the more than 800 colleges and universities that have closed since 2008. The data comes from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, and is updated periodically. And as an added bonus, read an interview with Jon Marcus, our senior higher education reporter, on how college applicants can gauge the financial health of schools where they may want to apply. A Game of College is an interactive website that explains how students successfully move from high school to college. Play the role of a student and select from a variety of different income levels and demographics. Then, navigate your way through college as debt-free as possible. This game was created in collaboration with CalMatters. This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.