College Seeker is an educational resource created by students enrolled in Georgia Tech’s Masters of Science in Analytics program.
Our motivation for this project stems from the fact that, every year, high school seniors in the U.S. decide which university to attend based on academics, career interest, location, prestige, etc., but often ignore the harsh realities of student loans and debt repayment. As of 2019, 43 million Americans had federal student loans with almost 20% in default [1]. This is a broad, societal problem in America, and there is a sore lack of easily-accessible web tools that feature the potentially long-lasting impact of student debt.
Our goal was to create a resource that prospective college students could utilize to discover new universities that fit their personal preferences and career aspirations- all while keeping a keen eye on costs and applicable debt to fund that education.
Please note that our team is composed of working professionals and full-time students, so we have had to prioritize certain features and developments to match our available resources and time constraints. As such, the website has not been optimized for mobile use and may be slow to load.
The majority of the data used in this project comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard (Update Version: 1-19-2021). As a disclaimer, please note that we have not validated the data provided by the US government and are not responsible for any associated errors. The university logos were retrieved from Clearbit’s free logo API.
Additionally, we have created a custom analytical model to predict the Five Year Repayment Rate for each college. Five Year Repayment Rate represents the percentage of students that are successfully paying down their loans five years after graduation. A school with a high repayment rate may represent a good value choice, where the investment in education leads to successful jobs that result in the ability to pay off loans. A low repayment rate may mean that students are defaulting or deferring payment after graduation. Please note that the Five Year Repayment Rate is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice or a guarantee that the viewer/reader will graduate with a similar five-year repayment rate.
This repo contains the code for the main collegeseeker web application, built using Firebase and hosted on Google Cloud Platform. The application is accessible at https://www.collegeseeker.net .
Thank You!
References House, T., & Plus, G. I. Student Loan System Presents Repayment Challenges.