How RecruitNav works
RecruitNav answers two questions: where can I go? and how do I get there? This page explains exactly how it arrives at the numbers you see, in plain English.
The Match Score is about you, not about prestige
The Match Score is a 0–100 answer to one question: how well does this school match what you've told us matters, based on the information RecruitNav has? Only the preferences you answered count — anything you skip carries no weight. When we don't have a school's data for something you said matters, that part can't be counted in its favor, and we tell you. It is not a ranking, not a quality rating, and not a chance of admission. Schools that match equally well are listed A–Z. Two students can look at the same school and correctly see very different scores. RecruitNav gives no school a scoring advantage for being famous, selective, or highly ranked.
What can go into your Match Score
Academic fit
Does this school teach what you want to study, and how does your academic record compare with the students it usually enrolls? Being stronger than a school's typical range is never held against you.
Career outcomes
What happens to graduates in YOUR field at this school — earnings a few years out, compared with debt and with what that same field earns nationally. If a school reports nothing for your field, we say so instead of using its all-graduates number as if it were the same thing.
Net price after aid
The typical net price students here pay after aid — not the sticker price, and not a personalized cost quote. For public universities we adjust for whether you'd be in-state or out-of-state. If you enter a real financial-aid offer, that replaces our estimate entirely.
Personal fit
Location, distance from home, size, setting and the other preferences you told us about. Anything you marked 'I'm open' is removed from the calculation completely — it can't help or hurt any school.
Only what you tell us counts, and how much depends on how strongly you said it matters. Say cost is your biggest concern and cost carries more weight; say you'd move anywhere and location stops counting at all. Graduation and retention rates are shown as school facts, not added to your score.
Your Admissions Outlook is shown separately
Admissions Outlook estimates how realistic admission may be based on the academic information you've shared. It is always displayed as its own label and range, and it never changes your Match Score or the order of your results — a higher Match Score does not mean easier admission. Long shots are never hidden; they stay in your results, clearly labeled High Reach. When most of your strongest matches are High Reach, we suggest adding Target and Likely schools to your list. When we can't estimate your chance at all, we don't guess. The estimate itself is a range, not a promise — it comes from the school's reported acceptance rate and where your scores sit in its published middle 50%.
Because your profile can change, every school page has a “What if?” panel: adjust a GPA or test score and you can see how your admissions outlook would move. Your Match Score stays the same, because it depends only on what you told us matters. Nothing you try there is saved to your profile.
Where the data comes from
- U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard — costs, net price by family income, graduation rates, earnings and debt, including field-of-study figures.
- Common Data Set filings published by the schools themselves — admissions factors, test score distributions, early decision and early action figures.
- Every value in RecruitNav records which source and which reporting year it came from. Where we show a number on a school page, we show where it came from.
What we do when we don't know something
We leave it out and tell you. RecruitNav never fills a gap with a guess, an average, or a zero. A school with thin data isn't punished for it either — its score is pulled toward the middle of comparable schools rather than being inflated or penalised, and each school page lists what we're missing.
What RecruitNav is not
- It is not an admissions decision, a prediction, or a guarantee of any outcome.
- It is not financial advice, and our cost figures are estimates until a school sends you a real offer.
- It does not replace a counselor, and it doesn't know your essays, your story, or your circumstances.
- It currently covers a curated set of four-year U.S. institutions, not every college in the country.
Recommendation methodology version v1.0.0. This is a beta: numbers may change as we correct data and methodology, and we'll say so when they do.