The data on this website are derived from five primary sources:

1. Pell grant file: these files provided the number of federal Pell grants and the total Pell grant dollars awarded at each college in the 2000-01, 2003-04, 2004-05, and 2005-06 academic years, supplied by the U. S. Department of Education. Information about Pell Grants is available at the Department of Education website.
2. FISAP files: these files provided data for the 2000-01, 2003-04, 2004-05, and 2005-06 academic years about the income distribution of all federal financial aid applicants, the 12-month undergraduate enrollment count, and the total dollars received in Pell grants, state grants, and tuition revenue at each college, also supplied by the Department of Education. The FISAP (Fiscal Operations Report and Application to Participate) is the application to participate in the federal campus-based financial aid programs (Work-study, Perkins loans, SEOG). Information about these is available at the Department of Education website.
3. IPEDS files: these files provided data for the 2000-01, 2003-04, 2004-05, and 2005-06 academic years on fall term undergraduate enrollments, 12-month enrollments, the distribution of students by race-ethnicity, tuition and fees, freshman retention rates, graduation rates, admissions selectivity, and Carnegie classification of each college. These files are available on the National Center for Education Statistics IPEDS website. IPEDS is Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
4. NSLDS file: a file from the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) that contained the number of borrowers and dollars borrowed in federal Stafford subsidized and unsubsidized loans by student class level for each college in 2003-04 and 2004-05, provided by the Department of Education. Information about Stafford loans is available at the Department of Education website.
5. CDS: many four-year institutions have reported data on the percentage of their graduates who borrowed for college, and the average amount of their student loan debts, as part of the Common Data Set (CDS) questionnaire used by publishers of college guides. Source: Peterson’s Undergraduate Financial Aid and Undergraduate Databases, © 2007 Peterson’s, a Nelnet company. All rights reserved.

Some state systems of universities provide reports to the Department of Education on a system-wide rather than a campus basis. In certain cases, we were able to supplement those data with campus-specific data provided by the university systems.