Our approach
Build a shortlist you can explain. UK qualifications are considered without an invented GPA conversion; UK–US comparisons describe particular characteristics, not equivalent universities. Academic requirements, selectivity and funding remain separate checks, with reasons and visible gaps. No university pays to appear or to be placed higher. Collections, starting points and similar-university suggestions follow the published rules below. Source links, reporting dates and qualifications accompany the research.
Privacy, saving and sharing
Your saved academic profile, shortlist, notes and recorded university replies are held in this browser’s local storage. The site’s code does not upload them to us, and they are not sold. The optional “Describe what you’re looking for” tool interprets text in this browser using phrase rules; its wording is not saved, backed up or sent to an AI service. Applied filters follow the sharing rules below. There is no student account or automatic Google Drive sync. If the school uses a separate sign-in gate, that sign-in is separate from your saved academic profile.
- Files you choose to save
- Backups, CSV downloads and printed reports can contain your saved information. You choose where to keep them, including Google Drive. Anyone you give a file to can read the information it contains.
- Links you choose to share
- A shared shortlist link contains the selected university IDs, not your academic profile or notes. A university link identifies that university. A filter link includes the filters you chose, which can include a budget limit or an aid preference.
- Ordinary website requests
- Cloudflare hosts the site and receives connection and request information, such as your IP address and the files requested, to deliver and protect it. That is separate from your saved profile and notes. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.
- Outside services
- Opening an external website follows that provider’s privacy practices. A visit route sends the chosen campus locations to Google Maps. Emailing a contact sends the information you put in your email through your email provider. If you choose the contact form, its reply email, topic and message are processed by Cloudflare and Resend for delivery to Gary’s school email address; your saved academic profile and notes are not attached.
- Your control
- “Clear my saved data” in the shortlist removes your saved academic profile, shortlist, notes and university replies from this browser. It does not delete copies you downloaded or saved elsewhere. Anyone using the same browser profile may be able to see the research saved here.
Checked against the site’s saving, sharing and download code on 8 November 2026. Hosting or school sign-in services may process their own request information; this explanation does not promise that visiting a website creates no records.
The map covers active public and private non-profit US institutions that report offering bachelor’s degrees and have mappable campus coordinates. It excludes institutions whose undergraduates were all enrolled remotely in the reporting period. Check entry eligibility and course availability with each institution.
- Campus, sector and setting: NCES IPEDS Institutional Directory and Institutional Characteristics 2025. Map dots show the reporting campus.
- Groups: Ivy League means the league’s eight official members. Liberal arts uses Carnegie’s 2021 “Baccalaureate Colleges: Arts & Sciences Focus” definition. Research uses Carnegie’s 2025 R1/R2 designations. Women’s colleges and specialist designations also come from Carnegie 2025, and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) from IPEDS. Groups can overlap.
- Academic focus: derived from the Carnegie 2025 institutional classification. “Broad academic” covers Arts & Sciences and Mixed institutions. “Career-focused” covers Professions-focused ones, and “Specialist” covers the other Special Focus types, such as theological, health, art and business schools.
- Subjects: NCES IPEDS Completions 2024–25. A subject appears if the institution reported bachelor’s awards in that field. Check the catalogue for the exact course, campus and route into the major.
- Enrolment, admit rate and test scores: NCES IPEDS autumn 2024. The admit rate covers all first-time applicants. SAT and ACT ranges are the middle 50% of reported scores from entering students. International share is the percentage of undergraduates reported as nonresidents. It does not measure your chances of admission. Use each university’s current admissions page for test policies and A level requirements.
- Yearly cost (one definition everywhere): tuition and fees, housing and food, books and personal costs for a first-year living on campus, before aid. Where we’ve checked a university’s own cost page we use its figures (mostly 2026–27). Any item it leaves out is filled from the NCES estimate and labelled. Otherwise we use the NCES IPEDS 2024–25 out-of-state, on-campus estimate. Travel, flights, visa and SEVIS fees and separately charged health insurance are never inside the yearly cost; they’re listed beside it, with amounts where the university gives them. A university that reports only tuition has no yearly cost here, and isn’t treated as within budget. Cards, filters, sorting, the shortlist, comparisons, CSV downloads and printed reports all use this same figure and the same exchange rate.
- Aid: selected published policies for first-year applicants who are neither US citizens nor US permanent residents, with source links and check dates. Need-blind means your ability to pay is not considered in admission. Full demonstrated need means need as the university calculates it. Universities whose policy hasn’t been checked can stay visible when you filter. They show in amber.
- Time difference and distance: worked out from each campus’s state and coordinates. The time difference updates for UK and US clock changes. Distance is a straight line from central London, not a flight time.
How planning labels work
Labels appear only when you’ve added a profile. Each university gets three separate checks: academic fit (verified subject, A-level and testing requirements), admissions selectivity (published admit rates, and whether the decision is made by programme) and funding fit (cost against your budget, and what any aid depends on). These are this tool’s own planning rules. They aren’t university rules or a tested prediction model, and they never give a chance of admission.
- High reach: overall admit rate under 15%, whatever your grades.
- Reach: admit rate 15% to under 40%. Also used when your achieved SAT/ACT is below the middle 50% of score submitters, or your predicted grades are below an A-level profile the university publishes.
- Possible match: admit rate 40% or more, plus academic evidence. That means an achieved SAT/ACT within or above the middle 50% of submitters, or predicted grades that meet an A-level profile or a UK minimum that the university publishes. A minimum counts as evidence, but it is the lowest grade considered, not a typical admitted profile.
- Potentially safer option: as for a possible match, plus an admit rate of 70% or more and a total cost within your budget before aid. A university that depends on aid or an uncertain scholarship is never called safer.
- Insufficient evidence: no admit rate, or a 40%+ admit rate with no academic evidence to compare. Most US universities don’t publish A-level profiles, so this is common.
- No label (requirement gap): a verified required A level is missing from your profile, or your predicted grades are below a minimum the university publishes for UK applicants.
Practice test scores are shown for reference only. A missing test score only counts where the university’s verified current policy requires one. Needing aid never changes a label, but need-aware policies are explained. A levels are never converted into a US GPA, and four A levels aren’t treated as better than three.
Requirements data: checked against official university pages for 90 universities (7 November 2026, mostly for entry in autumn 2027): testing policy, UK qualification guidance, subject requirements, deadlines, application platforms, English-test rules and each university’s own published cost. Each item stores its source link, date, scope (whole university or one programme) and whether the page itself was read or only a search summary of it. Items first seen only in search summaries were re-opened in a browser where possible. Every other university shows its requirements as unknown.
Net price calculators: links come from each university’s entry in the NCES IPEDS directory (2024). Most are designed for US families.
Pounds: converted at $1.3476 per £1 (Bank of England spot rate, 5 November 2026). You can enter your own rate in your profile. Dollar figures are always shown too.
Logos: each is the icon the university publishes on its own website, found from its official address in IPEDS. Where that couldn’t be read, it’s a Wikimedia Commons file matched to the university by its IPEDS ID through Wikidata. Icons that were too small, blank, a wide wordmark, or the same generic website-builder icon used by unrelated colleges were left out, and those universities keep a monogram. The source and check date are under Links in each profile. Logos only identify the university and don’t imply endorsement. They load after the rest of the page, so they never slow down the map or the list.
Records over a year old are flagged automatically in the checks, so an out-of-date copy of this tool warns you itself.
Applying from the UK: check each university’s guidance on UK qualifications, predicted A levels, school reports and deadlines. If you have US citizenship or permanent residency, confirm how the university classifies you for aid.
Starting points
“Starting points first” puts a small, mixed set of universities at the top of the list. To be included, a university must have UK guidance checked here, and together the set covers a range of selectivity (very selective to admitting most applicants), yearly cost and funding (including universities with merit scholarships or full-need aid for international students), size, US region and setting, and both liberal arts colleges and research universities, including some that are less familiar in the UK. Each card says briefly why it might be worth a look, using facts from its own page. They’re places to begin researching, not recommendations, rankings or predictions.
Common App requirements
Deadlines, application fees, fee waivers, references, portfolios, SAT/ACT codes and accepted English tests for about 1,040 universities come from Common App’s 2026–27 first-year requirements grid (updated 25 September 2026), matched to each university by name and website. We show them in our own words with a credit line. Where we’ve checked a university’s own page, our checked deadlines come first and any difference in the grid is flagged. Common App says its SAT/ACT codes describe US applicants, and its grid has no information on writing supplements, so those come from our own checks where we have them. Always confirm on the university’s website, and see commonapp.org for the Common App itself.
Temperatures, skiing and earnings by subject
Temperatures: monthly averages for 1970–2000 from WorldClim 2.1 (Fick and Hijmans, CC BY 4.0) at about 18 km resolution, with London from the same data. Skiing: the nearest operating downhill ski area in the US or Canada with at least 300 m of vertical, from OpenSkiMap (OpenStreetMap contributors and Skimap.org, ODbL). Earnings by subject: College Scorecard’s field-of-study file (US Department of Education): median earnings four years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree, for graduates who had US federal aid, with the US median for the same subject. They describe US graduates, not international students.
Town and city sizes: US populations are Census Bureau estimates for 2024 inside the town or city boundary (1,943 campuses; universities in unincorporated places have none). UK reference places are ONS Census 2021 built-up areas or, in Scotland, NRS mid-2020 settlements. The two countries draw boundaries differently, so “about the size of” is a rough guide. A campus in a New York City neighbourhood shows the whole city.
Aid forms: for the 82 universities whose aid policy we’ve checked, we also checked (7 November 2026) which forms international first-years need, by when, and whether aid must be requested at the same time as admission.
Filling in the Common App from a UK school
From Common App’s guidance for counsellors and international students (2025–26 and 2026–27) and the Fulbright Commission’s EducationUSA guides for UK students and teachers (2023), in our own words. Checked 7 November 2026.
- Timing. The Common App opens on 1 August. Deadlines are 11:59 pm in your own time zone. Ask your school for references and a transcript early in the autumn of Year 13, or before the summer if you’re applying early.
- Your school. If it isn’t in the list, choose “I don’t see my high school in this list” and type it in. US “grades 9–12” are Years 10–13.
- Graduation date: A-level results day. Class rank: none (UK schools don’t rank). GPA: choose none for the GPA scale and leave Cumulative GPA blank. Don’t convert your grades.
- Current courses. List each A level (and the EPQ) as a full-year course, using the “AS/A-level” course level, for example “A-level Economics”.
- Courses & Grades. Only some universities ask you to type in your courses and grades; the Common App requirements on each profile say if it’s needed. Otherwise your school’s transcript covers your grades.
- Testing section. Answer yes to the question about leaving examinations set by a national examinations board, then list only exams you’ve actually sat. Your predicted A-level grades and GCSE results go on the school’s transcript, not here. A levels don’t replace the SAT or ACT where a university requires one, unless it says so.
- What your school sends. A counsellor (often the head of sixth form or careers) sends the school report, a recommendation, a one-page transcript on letterhead (GCSE results and predicted A-level grades) and a school profile that explains the school doesn’t rank. Teachers send references (one or two; each profile says how many). The counsellor can’t also be one of your teachers. Later the school sends a mid-year report (an updated transcript) and a final report with your actual results. A UCAS reference is a starting point, but US readers expect a fuller, more personal letter with examples.
- Activities and experiences (renamed for 2026–27): up to 10, most important first, with 150 characters to describe each. Jobs, family responsibilities and hobbies count. Honours: up to five.
- Personal essay: up to 650 words, from the same seven prompts as last year. It isn’t a UCAS personal statement: it’s about you as a person, not your subject. Many universities add their own shorter essays.
- Fees. More than 650 Common App universities charge international applicants no fee. For the rest, each university decides whether its fee waiver covers international students (shown on each profile), and your counsellor approves the request.
- Financial aid. Many universities need the CSS Profile or their own form from international applicants, often by the application deadline. Each checked profile shows which forms and when.
- Before you submit. Nothing goes to universities until you submit your application, and each school form can be submitted only once.
Collections
The quick buttons above the list are collections with fixed rules. Each one is just a set of filters, so you can change it afterwards. They aren’t rankings or recommendations.
Must have and nice to have
Each filter section can be a must have, which hides universities that don’t match, or a nice to have, which hides nothing and puts universities meeting more of your nice-to-haves first. Each card then says which ones it misses. Aid policy, planning labels and search are always must-haves.
Similar universities
Profiles and the shortlist suggest universities with facts in common: type (liberal arts, research, women’s college, HBCU), number of undergraduates (within about 40%), setting, yearly cost (within 12%), overall admit rate, climate and checked aid policy, with the same academic focus. It’s a way to find places you might not have heard of, not a ranking.
Test score submission: the share of entering first-years who sent SAT or ACT scores comes from NCES IPEDS for autumn 2023, the latest year available as a download. Where few students send scores, the published ranges describe only those who did.
US admissions in plain English
- Common App
- One online application used by most US universities, a bit like UCAS but with a separate list of universities and their own extra essays. Some universities use their own form, and the University of California has the UC Application.
- Early Decision (ED)
- An early application, usually due in November, that is binding: if you’re admitted you must go and withdraw other applications. You can apply ED to only one university. ED II is a later binding round.
- Early Action (EA)
- An early application that isn’t binding. You hear sooner and can still apply elsewhere. Restrictive or single-choice Early Action (REA/SCEA) is also not binding, but limits other early applications.
- Regular Decision (RD)
- The main round, usually due in early January, with decisions in March or April. Rolling admission means decisions as applications arrive.
- Test-optional / test-free
- Test-optional: you choose whether to send an SAT or ACT score. Test-free (or test-blind): scores aren’t considered at all.
- Major
- Your main subject. At many US universities you choose it during your first or second year, so you apply to the university rather than to a course. Some schools within a university, often engineering or business, admit separately.
- Liberal arts college
- A smaller college focused on undergraduate teaching across many subjects, with a broad first year before you specialise.
- School report and recommendations
- Your school sends a report, predicted grades and usually a counsellor’s letter, and most universities also want one or two teacher recommendations. A levels aren’t converted into a US grade point average (GPA).
- Need-blind / need-aware
- Need-blind: asking for financial aid doesn’t affect admission. Need-aware: it can be part of the decision, often for international applicants.
- Meets full demonstrated need
- The university promises to cover the gap between its cost and what it calculates your family can pay. Its figure can differ from yours.
- Merit scholarship
- An award for achievement rather than need. Some are automatic, others competitive. Many are partial and don’t cover the full cost.
- CSS Profile / financial aid forms
- The forms many universities use to calculate need. International applicants often need them, or the university’s own form, at the same time as the application.
- Net price calculator
- A tool every US university must publish to estimate the cost after aid. Most are built for US families, so for international students use it only where the university says it applies.
- Cost of attendance / I-20
- The university’s estimate of a full year’s cost. The I-20 is the form you need for an F-1 student visa, and it requires proof that you can pay the estimated cost.
