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best odds

Strongest school on your list

Add a school to begin

Every school is scored against the pool you would actually compete with there: the transfer applicants to your major, at that campus, in that cycle.

Best fits

A starting list, not a recommendation: the strongest programs in your major at each level of reach for you. Nothing here is added to your list until you add it.

How this is built

Who runs the program. Every school that reported bachelor's degrees in your major to the Department of Education last year. A school that graduated nobody in it is not a fit, whatever else it is.
What the program is worth. Its graduates' earnings against everyone who finished the same field — measured against the school's own state where that figure exists, because in a field whose pay is regional the national comparison is mostly a statement about the state. Where earnings are unpublished, the size of the department and how central it is to the campus stand in, and they cannot carry a school as high as a measured result can.
What it costs to carry. Median debt at graduation against median first-year pay.
Where you can go. Three settings, because whether you can leave the state is not something this app can work out for you. Only schools in my state offers nothing outside it, however strong. Prefer my state holds half the list for it and lets the rest of the country compete for what is left — held across the whole list rather than per band, since a state's programs do not spread evenly across your odds, and a floor rather than a ceiling, so the ordinary ranking adds more wherever they earn it. Anywhere in the country stops counting residency rather than counting it against you. In-state publics rank above in-state privates throughout, since cost is the difference left once residency is settled, and the bands and the ranking are identical under all three.
A spread, not a pile. Your odds sort the results into bands and the list is filled from each, so it comes out as four you should get into, four live chances and a few reaches — not twelve of whichever kind scored best.
Caps. At most two primarily-online universities and three schools from any one state other than yours. Open-admission online schools otherwise take every safety place and leave you with no campus you can drive to.

Every input is the same public data used everywhere else in this app: modelled admission odds, and federal figures for the programs. None of it knows this year's department caps, what a campus is like, or whether you would be happy there.

— odds update as you type.

Programs by major

not loaded

There is no public ranking of program quality, so this ranks nothing on reputation. Every figure below is reported by the school to the Department of Education or measured from federal tax records.

How the number is produced

The pool, not the rate

A school's transfer admit rate and the GPA its admitted transfers carry are enough to reconstruct the pool behind them. Admitting the top slice of a group lifts the admitted average by a known amount, so that arithmetic runs backwards: it recovers the average applicant, which is the person you are actually competing with.

Your major sets the real rate

The university rate is not the rate you face. Nursing and computer science admit a fraction of it and draw a stronger pool; classics and general studies admit above it. Each of the 154 majors carries both effects, plus whether the department admits directly, caps clinical seats, or weighs a portfolio.

Where your file lands

Your GPA and your file are placed inside that pool as a percentile, and admission sits at the percentile the seats run out. Everything on the file is measured against the typical applicant there, not against an empty page: being in-state at a state flagship is worth nothing when most of the pool is in-state too. Each field contributes exactly one line, so nothing is counted twice.

Programs are reported, not ranked

The Programs pane ranks nothing on reputation, because no reusable ranking of program quality exists to draw on. It reports four measured things and lets you sort on each: how many degrees a school awards in the field, how central the field is to that campus, what its graduates earn against everyone who finished the same field, and what they owe against what they earn. Earnings come from federal tax records, so they are counted rather than surveyed.

Earnings read who enrolled as much as what was taught, and they are nominal — a school in an expensive city sits higher for that reason alone, which is why every field also carries its own state's median. Roughly a third of programs publish no earnings at all: the Department suppresses any figure drawn from too few graduates to report safely, and those show a size and nothing else rather than an estimate.

Suggestions are a spread, not a pile

Best fits puts the two halves of this app together: the odds decide which band a school competes in, and the program tables decide which schools lead that band. The list is then filled from every band rather than from the top, because twelve reaches is a bad list however strong the programs are. Two caps keep one kind of school from being the whole answer — at most two primarily-online universities, and three from any state but your own.

Cost is the number nobody quotes

The published price of a college is almost never what anyone pays. Net price — the price after the grant aid students actually received — is, and it moves enormously with household income: Harvard's sticker is $61,676 and its net price is $2,091 for a family earning $48,000 to $75,000. At a few very well-endowed schools the aid exceeds the entire cost of attendance and the lowest income bands are negative, meaning the student is paid to attend. Tell the record your income band and every card, suggestion and search result prices itself for you; leave it blank and you get the all-incomes average, labelled as such.

The graduation rate shown beside it is the federal one, which counts first-time, full-time students only and therefore excludes transfer students by construction. It describes the campus you would be joining, not people arriving the way you are. It is worth knowing and it is not your rate; nothing here implies otherwise.

Read it as a bracket

P marks a published transfer admit rate, E one estimated from selectivity. The model does not know this year's department caps, and admission turns on things no calculator sees. Confirm every rate, deadline, and credit cap with the school.

What this is, and what it is not

It is a planning estimate. Every number on this page is modelled, not measured. No college publishes its transfer decisions at the applicant level, so nothing here is fitted to real outcomes — the model reconstructs each school's applicant pool from its published transfer admit rate and the GPA its admitted transfers carry, then places your record inside it. Treat a number as a bracket and a sanity check, never as a decision.

It is not affiliated with any college. Institution names appear only to identify the schools the estimates describe. No school has reviewed, endorsed, or supplied anything here, and no logos or marks are used.

It is not advice. Where you apply, what you major in, and what you spend on applications are your decisions. Confirm every admit rate, deadline, credit cap, and prerequisite with the school's own admissions office or its Common Data Set before you rely on it.

Privacy

Your record stays in your own browser's local storage. There is no account, no server, no database, and nothing is transmitted anywhere — the calculation runs entirely on your device. Clearing your browser data clears your record. Typefaces are served from this site rather than a font provider, so the page makes no third-party request at all.

Cost and completion figures

Net price, published tuition, graduation and retention rates come from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard institution file, which is in the public domain. Net price is the total cost of attendance minus the grant and scholarship aid students actually received, reported both as an average and split across five household income bands; the app uses the band you give it and falls back to the average, saying which it used. Graduation is the six-year rate for first-time, full-time students and excludes transfers. Roughly 99% of the schools here carry all of it.

Program figures

Degrees awarded, graduate earnings and graduate debt come from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard field-of-study file, which is in the public domain. Earnings are the median for graduates of that program at that school one and two years after completing, drawn from federal tax records, and cover students who received federal aid. Schools are matched to the federal record by IPEDS UNITID, and each of this app's majors is mapped to the federal CIP field it falls in — where a major spans two fields, both are pooled and the app says so. Nothing in that pane is modelled or estimated: a figure is either the federal one or it is marked unpublished.

Where the numbers come from

Each school carries one transfer admit rate and one admitted-transfer GPA. P marks a rate taken from a published transfer figure; E marks one estimated from overall selectivity and peer institutions. Both are approximations compiled for planning. Corrections are welcome and easy to apply — the reference table is a plain text file.

Matriculate Plus

Everything the estimates are built on stays free. Plus adds the money and the outcomes.

Free, always

Admission estimates for all 588 schools
Best fits, built from your record
How large each program is, and where it ranks
Deadlines and state transfer guarantees
A saved list of up to five schools
The offline copy

Plus

Net price for your income band — what a household like yours actually paid after grant aid, not the sticker
Graduation and retention rates
Graduate earnings and debt, one and two years out, by program
An unlimited list
CSV export and share links

These figures are not in this page. They are held by the entitlement API and sent only to a browser with a licence — so there is nothing here to unlock, and nothing being hidden from you.

Already bought it?

Paste the licence key from your receipt. It is stored in this browser, like your record, and sent to the licence API and nowhere else.

Terms, privacy and notices

Terms of use

Last updated 18 September 2026

Matriculate is published by an individual. The calculator is free; some figures are sold as an optional upgrade, Matriculate Plus. By using the site you agree to what follows. If you do not agree, do not use it.

1. What the service is

Matriculate helps a prospective transfer student build a list of colleges worth applying to. It does several distinct things, and they carry different weight:

Admission estimates. The likelihood that an applicant with a given record would be admitted. Every one of these numbers is modelled, not measured. No college publishes transfer decisions at the applicant level, so nothing here is fitted to real outcomes. The model reconstructs each school's applicant pool from its published transfer admit rate and the grade point average its admitted transfers carry, then places your record inside that pool.
Best fits. A suggested slate assembled from those estimates and the preferences you give it. A suggestion, not a recommendation.
Cost, completion and program figures. Net price, tuition, graduation and retention rates, degrees awarded, graduate earnings and graduate debt. These are reproduced from federal data as published — not modelled by this site.
Deadlines. Verified system-wide filing periods where they exist, and otherwise a period rather than a date.
Transfer guarantees. Summaries of statewide articulation policy for the states where one was read from a primary source, with a link to that source, plus links into ASSIST for California.

Estimates are planning aids. They are not predictions, guarantees, or statements of fact about any admission decision.

2. Not advice

Nothing here is educational, financial, legal or professional advice, and using it creates no advisory relationship. Where you apply, what you study, what you spend on applications and what you borrow are your decisions. Verify every admit rate, deadline, credit cap, prerequisite, price and policy with the institution's own admissions or financial aid office before relying on it.

3. Accuracy of the estimates

The reference tables carry one transfer admit rate and one admitted-transfer grade point average per institution. Rates marked P come from published transfer figures; rates marked E are estimated from overall selectivity and peer institutions. Both are approximations, both go out of date, and both may simply be wrong. The site does not know this year's departmental caps or any individual reader's circumstances. Corrections are welcome.

4. Accuracy of the federal figures

Cost, completion and program figures are taken from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard as published, with nothing interpolated or smoothed, and figures the Department suppresses are shown as absent rather than filled in. They still carry the limits of their source. Net price is a past year's average for students who received federal aid, not a quote, and what you are actually charged depends on your own circumstances and the school's own aid offer. The federal graduation rate counts only first-time, full-time students and therefore excludes transfer students by construction — it describes the campus, not people arriving the way you are. Graduate earnings cover federally aided students and reflect cohorts who finished several years ago.

5. Deadlines

A date is shown only where a filing period is published system-wide and was checked against the system's own page; the date it was checked is shown with it. Everywhere else the site deliberately shows a period rather than a date, because false precision here costs someone an application. Deadlines move, campuses differ from their systems, and a period is not a deadline. Confirm the date with the school before you rely on it.

6. Transfer guarantees and articulation

Where a state guarantee is shown it is a plain-language summary of a policy, not the policy, and the wording that governs is on the page it links to. Coverage was verified for a limited number of states and the section says plainly where no public source exists. Guarantees carry conditions this site cannot evaluate for you — degree completion, grade minimums, deadlines, available space, programme-specific limits. Nothing here is a promise that any credit will transfer or that any admission will follow. Only the receiving institution's registrar can answer that, and this site's purpose in that section is to send you to them.

7. Links to other sites

The site links out to institutions' own pages, to federal records, to state policy pages and to ASSIST. Those sites are not operated by this one and are not endorsed by it; their content, availability and terms are their own. ASSIST is the official articulation repository for California's public colleges, operated by the Regents of the University of California; its content is theirs, is not reproduced here, and this site links to it rather than copying it.

8. No affiliation with any institution

College and university names appear only to identify the institutions the estimates describe. No institution has reviewed, endorsed, sponsored or supplied anything here. No logos, crests, seals or mascots are used. Any trademarks referenced remain the property of their owners.

9. No warranty

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including without limitation any warranty of accuracy, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. It may be changed, interrupted or withdrawn at any time without notice.

10. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the publisher shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or exemplary damages, or for any loss of opportunity, admission, credit, tuition, application fees, time or data, arising out of or relating to your use of or reliance on this service — whether or not the possibility of such damages was known. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions, in which case they apply to the maximum extent permitted.

11. Acceptable use

Do not present these estimates as official figures from any institution.
Do not redistribute the service, or access to it, as a paid advisory product of your own.
Do not attempt to disrupt the site or the people using it.

The source code is published under the MIT License, which permits reuse and modification on its own terms. Those terms govern the code; this section governs use of the hosted site.

12. Paying for Matriculate Plus

What is free. Admission estimates for every school, best fits, how large each programme is, deadlines, the state transfer guarantees, the offline copy, and a saved list of up to five schools. Nothing that was free has been taken away to make Plus.

What Plus adds. Net price by household income band, published tuition and the non-resident premium, the federal graduation and retention rates, graduate earnings and debt by programme, an unlimited list, CSV export and share links.

Who you are buying from. Payment is handled by Paddle.com Market Limited, who are the merchant of record — legally the seller. Your receipt and card statement will say Paddle, and Paddle collect and remit any sales tax or VAT due. Their terms and privacy policy apply to the transaction itself.

What you get. A licence key, shown on the page you are returned to after paying. Paste it into the Matriculate Plus tab of any browser you want it active in. There is no account and no password. The key is not tied to one device; treat it as you would a password, because anyone who has it can use it.

Refunds. Write to the address below within 30 days and you will be refunded, no reasons needed. Refunds are issued by Paddle, and the licence stops working when one is processed. Nothing about the free part of the site changes.

If something goes wrong. If a payment succeeds and no licence arrives, write to the address below with the Paddle receipt and it will be issued by hand. If Plus stops working for a reason that is not a refund or a chargeback, that is a fault and it will be fixed or refunded.

What is not promised. Plus buys access to figures as the federal government published them, not accuracy beyond what the Department of Education itself provides, and not any particular outcome. The whole of section 4 applies to them.

Ending it. The publisher may stop selling Plus at any time. Licences already sold keep working for as long as the site runs; if the site is withdrawn within twelve months of a purchase, that purchase will be refunded on request.

13. Minors

The site is intended for prospective transfer students, who are generally adults. It collects no personal information from anyone, of any age. If you are under 13, ask a parent or guardian before using it.

14. Changes

These terms may be updated. The date above says when they last were. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the revised terms. A change that affects what a licence already bought will not be applied to licences sold before it.

15. Contact

Questions, corrections and takedown requests: schote.gavin@yahoo.com

Privacy

Last updated 18 September 2026

This site collects nothing. There is no account, no server, no database, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixel and no cookie. Every calculation runs inside your browser, on your device. Nothing you type is transmitted anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to go.

What is stored, and where

Your record — grade point average, credits, college, residency, household income band, major, entry term, self-ratings and your school list — is written to your browser's local storage under the key matriculate:v1. A second key, matriculate:walkthrough:v1, records only that you have seen the opening questions, so you are not asked again. If you have bought Matriculate Plus, a third, matriculate:licence:v1, holds your licence key. Earlier versions of the site used transfer-odds:v1 and transfer-odds:walkthrough:v1; those are read once so a returning visitor does not lose their list, and are otherwise unused.

Local storage lives on your own device. It is not a cookie, it is never sent with a network request, and no one else can read it, including the publisher. Your income band is deliberately left out of shared links — a link you send someone carries your grades and your school list, never what your household earns. This is enforced by a test that fails the build if income ever survives a round trip through a link.

To erase it: press Clear on the record panel, or clear site data for this domain in your browser settings. A private or incognito window keeps nothing after you close it. Export CSV writes a file to your own machine and sends it nowhere.

Under the ePrivacy Directive and comparable rules, storage a user explicitly asks for — here, your own record, saved so the site is usable on your next visit — is strictly necessary for the function requested and needs no consent banner. That is the only storage this site performs.

Third parties

The site contacts none. The typefaces are served from this site's own origin rather than from a font CDN, so while you use the site your browser makes no request to any third party, and no third party sees your address through it. This was verified by recording every network request the site makes during a full session: all of them go to this site and nowhere else.

Paying

The calculator itself still contacts nobody, and buying something does not change that. Checkout happens on a separate page, reached only by pressing Get Plus, and that page is the one place on this site that loads a script from somewhere else — Paddle's, because their checkout requires it. Your card details go to Paddle and are never seen by this site or its publisher.

Paddle are the merchant of record, so the name and email on the receipt are held by them, under their privacy policy. What comes back here is a licence key and nothing else: no name, no email, no card. The key is stored in this browser beside your record, under matriculate:licence:v1, and is sent to the licence API to ask one question — is this key active — and nowhere else. Your record, your list and your income band are never sent with it.

The licence API sees the key and the request, and keeps no log tying either to a person. Removing the key from this browser is a button on the Matriculate Plus tab.

The site does link to other places — colleges' own admissions pages, federal records, state policy pages and ASSIST. Nothing is sent to them until you click, and what you type here is never attached to those links. Once you follow one you are on someone else's site, under their privacy policy rather than this one.

Offline use

A service worker stores the site's own files on your device so it keeps working without a connection, and there is a single-file offline copy you can download and keep. Both hold the site itself, never your record, and neither sends anything anywhere.

Server logs

The site is static files on a hosting provider. Like any web host, that provider may record standard request logs — address, timestamp, page requested, user agent — for delivery, security and abuse prevention. The publisher does not analyse those logs to identify or profile visitors.

Your record is yours

Because nothing is collected, there is nothing to request, correct, export or delete from anyone else's systems — the rights you hold under the GDPR, the UK GDPR, the CCPA and similar laws have no data here to attach to. Nothing is ever sold or shared, because nothing is ever received.

If this ever changes

If analytics, accounts or any other data collection are added later, this page will be rewritten before that ships and the date above will change. Any analytics adopted will be cookieless and aggregate.

Contact

schote.gavin@yahoo.com

Notices and attributions

This project

The reference tables

The tables are compilations of factual figures — admit rates, grade point averages, credit caps. In the United States facts are not copyrightable (Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340), so the numbers themselves are free for anyone to use. Nothing here was copied from a licensed database. Figures marked P come from institutions' own published transfer statistics and Common Data Set filings; figures marked E are estimates derived from overall selectivity. The authoritative public source for verification is IPEDS, published by the US Department of Education and in the public domain.

Federal data

Cost, completion and program figures come from the U.S. Department of Education's College Scorecard — the institution file for net price, published tuition, graduation and retention rates, and the field-of-study file for degrees awarded, graduate earnings and graduate debt. Institution states and directory details come from IPEDS. Both are works of the federal government, carry no copyright (17 U.S.C. §105), and are reproduced as published: nothing is interpolated, smoothed or estimated, and figures the Department suppresses for small cohorts are carried as absent rather than filled in.

State transfer policy

The statewide transfer guarantees are summarised from each state's own governing body — among them the Ohio Department of Higher Education, the California State University, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Florida Department of Education, the State University of New York, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, the North Carolina Community College System and the Virginia Community College System. Each summary carries the date it was checked and links to the source it was read from. Statutes and public policy documents are not copyrightable; the summaries are ours and are not the policy.

ASSIST

ASSIST is the official repository of articulation for California's public colleges and universities, operated by the Regents of the University of California on behalf of the California Community Colleges, the California State University and the University of California. Its articulation content is copyrighted by the Regents and is not reproduced here. This site stores only institution identifiers and the current academic year, taken from ASSIST's own public institution list, and uses them to construct links into assist.org so that readers land on the agreement itself, maintained and current, on the site that maintains it.

Payment

Payment for Matriculate Plus is processed by Paddle.com Market Limited as merchant of record. Paddle.js is loaded from Paddle's own CDN on the checkout page only. Paddle is not affiliated with this project beyond that relationship, and no institution named on this site is involved in it.

Institution names

College and university names appear solely to identify the institutions the estimates describe. This is nominative use. No institution has reviewed, endorsed, sponsored or supplied anything in this project, and no logos, crests, seals or mascots are reproduced.

Fonts

Poppins (© Indian Type Foundry, Jonny Pinhorn), Plus Jakarta Sans (© Tokotype) and JetBrains Mono (© JetBrains s.r.o.) are licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1, and are served from this site's own origin.

Contact

Corrections, attribution questions and takedown requests: schote.gavin@yahoo.com