Numbers you can trust. Real schedules, not guesses.
Every figure on SchoolCost traces back to a published fee schedule, an archived page, or a verified directory listing. We don't interpolate. We don't CPI-adjust. We show you the actual dollar amounts schools charge, and we tag each data point with how confident we are in it.
Where the numbers come from.
Published fee schedules
Every school's current-year schedule, scraped from their own website or sent to us in PDF form. We link back to the exact source page for every data point.
Archived historical pages
For prior years, we use Wayback archives of the same school pages only where the archived copy is legible. Never estimates.
Never guesses or CPI averages
If a year is missing, the fee row is blank with a muted “not yet published” marker. We never fill it with a made-up number.
Confidence tags.
Three or more consecutive published years, same school, same band.
One to two published years. Projection cone widens beyond 3 years out.
Single year only, or archived source. Treat projections as indicative.
No published fee yet. Number carried forward from the most recent known year at the school's CAGR.
“We use each school's own fee trend, not CPI, not a sector average.”
Update cadence.
Schedules are refreshed when schools publish their next-year fees, typically October–December. If we miss one, tell us and we'll pull it within 48 hours.