How CampusPin actually uses the college data it sources

The short version

CampusPin is a federated view, not a publisher

CampusPin does not collect original college data through surveys, scraping, or institutional outreach for the purposes of inventing new numbers. Every quantitative field on a school profile comes from a public source that someone else (usually the U.S. Department of Education) already collected, validated, and published.

What CampusPin contributes is the discovery layer: the search, filters, map, comparison, and pinned-shortlist workflows that let a student or family interact with public data in a way that's actually useful for choosing a college. Editorial review applies to written guidance, not to the underlying institutional numbers.

Step 1 — Ingest

Data lands from primary sources, never scraped second-hand

CampusPin ingests directly from the source where possible. IPEDS data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics' annual published files, not from a third-party aggregator. College Scorecard data comes from the U.S. Department of Education's public Scorecard API and downloadable files.

Clery security data comes from each institution's annual security report, published per the Clery Act every October. FBI Uniform Crime Report data comes from the FBI's annual published tables.

Common Application acceptance is tracked from the Common Application's public member directory. Institutional logos, photography, and claimed-profile editorial copy come from institutional websites and from authenticated submissions by claimed institution representatives.

• No data is scraped from third-party aggregators (Niche, Forbes, US News, College Board) — that introduces a chain-of-custody problem and an attribution conflict.
• No private data is purchased from list brokers — student demographic data on CampusPin is your own, not bought.
• No data from social media or unverified public posts — institutional facts come from institutional or governmental sources only.

Step 2 — Normalise

Units and shapes are reconciled before display

Different sources report the same concept in different shapes. IPEDS reports enrollment as a count of students; Scorecard reports it as the same count one year offset; institutional websites sometimes describe enrollment as "approximately X" or as a range. CampusPin normalises each to a single canonical field.

Tuition is normalised to an annual figure in U.S. dollars, even when the source publishes per-credit-hour pricing. Currency, time period, and rounding are all reconciled at ingest so the comparison page can read numbers across schools with confidence.

Categorical fields — school type, control, campus setting, state — are normalised to a fixed taxonomy. Programs are normalised by Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code so a "Computer Science" search returns the same set of programs across IPEDS' reporting language and the institution's own marketing language.

Step 3 — Join

Records join by IPEDS unit ID, not by name

Joining institutional records by name is a common but unreliable approach — schools rename themselves, share names with each other (multiple "University of California" campuses, multiple "St. John's"), and use different formal vs. colloquial naming.

CampusPin keys every record by IPEDS unit ID (the federal unique identifier for each institution) and joins all data sources through that key. The IPEDS unit ID is stable across reporting cycles, so a school renaming itself does not break its history, and two schools with similar names are never accidentally merged.

• IPEDS unit ID is the single source of truth for institution identity.
• Scorecard, Clery, and IPEDS all use the IPEDS unit ID natively — joins are exact, not fuzzy.
• Institutional claimed-profile submissions are also tied to the verified IPEDS unit ID after the claim is approved.

Step 4 — Resolve conflicts

Most recent verified value wins

Sources sometimes disagree. An institutional website might publish a newer tuition figure than the latest IPEDS release. A claimed-profile submission might update an enrollment figure that IPEDS has not yet refreshed.

CampusPin resolves these conflicts with a simple rule: the most recent value from a verified source wins, with provenance tracked for the user. The CampusPin profile shows the value and the source year alongside it (e.g., "Tuition $X — IPEDS, 2024–25"), so the user can see exactly what they're looking at.

When sources cannot be reconciled — for example, when a claimed-profile submission lacks supporting documentation — CampusPin defaults to the federal source until the institutional update is verified. This errs on the side of "boring federal number" rather than "exciting but unverified claim".

Step 5 — Display

Every value carries its source and year

Profile pages display the value, the source, and the reporting year (where applicable). This is the difference between a number you can trust and a number you have to take on faith.

For derived fields (e.g., net price by income band), the calculation method and the underlying inputs are documented in the data dictionary. For categorical fields (e.g., campus setting), the taxonomy is enumerated in the data dictionary so a user can see exactly what "midsize city" means.

For fields that are missing entirely — the institution didn't report them in any source CampusPin trusts — the field is omitted, not replaced with a placeholder or estimated. The missing-data policy and rationale is at /data-resources/how-campuspin-handles-missing-data.

Frequently asked questions

Answers students and families ask first

Does CampusPin run its own surveys of colleges?

No. CampusPin does not collect original quantitative institutional data through surveys, scraping, or outreach. Every number on a school profile comes from a public source — IPEDS, Scorecard, Clery, FBI UCR, the Common Application, or the institution's own website / claimed-profile submission.

How does CampusPin decide which source wins when two disagree?

Most recent value from a verified source wins. The profile shows the value and the source year alongside it so the user can see what they're looking at. Unverified institutional claims default to the federal source until verification completes.

How are schools matched across data sources?

By IPEDS unit ID — the federal unique identifier for each institution. CampusPin never joins by school name because names rename, repeat across campuses, and vary between formal and colloquial usage.

Does CampusPin buy data from list brokers or third-party aggregators?

No. Institutional facts come only from primary sources (federal datasets, the institution itself). User data is not purchased from list brokers. CampusPin does not sell or share visitor data for advertising or admissions-marketing purposes.

How does CampusPin handle program normalisation?

By Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code. A search for "Computer Science" returns programs that match CIP 11.0701 and related codes, so the result set is consistent across schools even when each institution markets the program with different language.

Where can I see the exact source and year for a value on a profile?

Each profile shows the source year alongside the value (e.g., "Tuition $X — IPEDS, 2024–25"). Field-level definitions and provenance rules are at /data-dictionary, and the full source-by-field methodology is at /data-methodology.