First-Gen Fit Score
Answer a few questions and we'll rank colleges by how well they graduate students like you — using real federal data. Every question is optional.
Data: U.S. Dept. of Education College Scorecard. Fit Score is an estimate based on public federal data. Not official admissions guidance.
For many students, picking a college isn’t just about prestige — it’s about who actually graduates people like them. The First-Gen Fit Score is built around that question.
The First-Gen Fit Score is a free college-matching tool that ranks U.S. colleges and universities by how well they serve first-generation students — those whose parents did not earn a four-year degree. Rather than sorting schools by rankings, brand name, or SAT averages, it measures something more meaningful: the likelihood that a student with your specific background, budget, and goals will actually thrive and graduate at each school.
The tool pulls live data directly from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard, a federal database built from verified enrollment, completion, and earnings records. Every number you see reflects real students at real schools — not estimates or editorial opinion.
How it works. You’re presented with up to five short questions: whether you identify as first-gen, your annual budget after financial aid, a preferred state, a preferred school size, and a broad academic interest. Every question can be skipped — you can run a search with just one answer, or all five. The more you fill in, the more tailored your results.
Once you run a search, the tool queries the Scorecard API in real time, filters to schools that fit your parameters, and computes a Fit Score from 0 to 100 for each one. That score is a weighted composite of four signals drawn from federal data:
Schools are ranked by Fit Score and presented as cards — up to 20 results per search. Each card shows everything you need to evaluate a school at a glance.
What each result card shows. Beyond the Fit Score, every card surfaces the full picture:
The acceptance rate tells you how selective a school is. The median earnings figure — drawn from IRS-verified tax records — shows what graduates actually earned six years after starting, giving you a concrete return-on-investment signal alongside the cost data.
How to use the results. The Fit Score is a starting point, not a verdict. A score of 82 doesn’t mean a school is perfect for you — it means the federal data suggests strong alignment across the four signals. Use it to narrow a long list down to schools worth researching more deeply: visit their net price calculators, look up their first-gen support programs, or reach out to their admissions offices.
Students deciding between in-state and out-of-state options can run the search twice — once with a state filter, once without — and compare how their local options stack up against the national field at the same budget. Parents helping a student explore options can use the budget sliders to understand the realistic cost landscape before conversations about financial aid get started.
School counselors and college access advisors can use the tool as a discussion starter: running a student’s stated preferences live during an advising session surfaces schools the student may never have considered, grounded in data rather than word-of-mouth or rankings they’ve seen online.
Because results are drawn live from federal data, they reflect the most recently published Scorecard figures — not a static list assembled months ago. Refine your filters as many times as you like; each search is a fresh query.