Methodology and sources
Every number on WhoGotIn traces back to a file a public agency or school published. Here is which source, which years, and where the numbers have limits.
Sources
| Source | Years | Used for | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| UC admissions by source schoolUniversity of California Information Center | fall 1994–2025 | UC applicants, admits, admit rates, and admitted students' mean GPA, all campuses and each campus; each campus's admit rate over all California high-school applicants | UC hides counts below 3. Each campus's California applicants rate adds up every California high school's applicants and admits that fall, counting a hidden admit count as 1. GPA is UC's weighted, capped high school GPA, averaged over admitted students or over all applicants. Campus counts double-count students admitted to several campuses; the all-campus count does not. When one year has under 10 applicants, a campus shows the pooled rate over up to three years instead. |
| UC admissions by residencyUniversity of California Information Center | fall 1994–2025 | UC applicants, admits and admit rates for first-year and transfer students who are California residents, U.S. residents of other states, or international, on each UC campus's page | Campus-level counts: a student who applied to several campuses counts at each. UC hides counts that are too small to publish; they show as a dash. Enrollment by residency is in the full report. |
| CSU admissions by residencyCalifornia State University | fall 2021–2025 | CSU applicants, admits and admit rates for first-time freshmen and undergraduate transfers who are California residents or not, on each CSU campus's page | From the CSU Applications and Admissions dashboard. It does not separate international students, so "not a California resident" includes them. Campus-level counts: a student who applied to several campuses counts at each. CSU hides counts that are too small to publish; they show as a dash. Enrollment by residency is in the full report. |
| Residence of first-year students (IPEDS)U.S. Department of Education | fall 2014–2023 | Where each college's first-time degree-seeking students lived when first admitted: California, elsewhere in the U.S., or abroad, on each college's page (colleges other than UC and CSU) | Enrolled students only: IPEDS publishes no applicants or admits by residency. Colleges must report residence in even-numbered years; some also report odd years. Students whose residence was not reported are left out of the shares. Foreign means living abroad when admitted, which is not the same as citizenship. |
| CSU high school dashboardCalifornia State University | fall 2020–2025 | CSU applicants and admits by campus | The dashboard lists each school's most-applied campuses; a student admitted to several campuses counts once per campus. |
| Campus overall admit rates and test scores (IPEDS)U.S. Department of Education | fall 2019–2023 | Each campus's overall admit rate (all applicants, including out-of-state and international), shown beside the school's rate for CSU campuses, and the SAT and ACT middle 50% of its enrolled freshmen; applicants, admit rates, yield, and SAT and ACT ranges on the Ivy League and top university pages | IPEDS lags a year or two; the year used is shown next to each rate. |
| College-going ratesCalifornia Department of Education | classes of 2015–2023 | Where graduates enroll within 12 months (public schools) | Counts under 11 are suppressed by the state. The full report breaks each class down by student group (gender, race or ethnicity, low-income, English learners, disabilities, and more). For classes the state has not published yet, the full report gives an early look: UC's and CSU's own counts of freshmen from the school over its seniors that fall. UC's share has run within about a point of the state's; CSU lists only a school's most-applied campuses, so its share is a floor. |
| A–G completionCalifornia Department of Education | classes of 2015–2023 | Share of graduates who completed the courses UC and CSU require | From the college-going file; public schools only. |
| Enrollment by gradeCalifornia Department of Education | school years ending 1994–2026 | 12th graders (seniors), the base for the share who applied and were admitted | October counts, so slightly above the number who graduate. Private schools report grade 12 on the private school affidavit. |
| CAASPP Smarter Balanced, grade 11California Department of Education | tested 2015–2026 | Share of juniors meeting or exceeding, and exceeding, the English and math standards | No test in 2020; 2021 testing was optional. Private schools do not take CAASPP. |
| Free or reduced-price meals (FRPM)California Department of Education | school years ending 2018–2026 | Share of low-income students | Public schools only. |
| School profiles and matriculation listsEach high school's own website | as published | Named colleges a school reports its graduates at, including private and out-of-state ones | Self-reported by schools, so only some schools have one, and schools count different things (enrolled, admitted, applied, or attended over several classes); each list says which. Names are matched to the federal college list; lists read only automatically are marked as not yet verified. |
| National Student Clearinghouse reports (via districts)School districts (StudentTracker reports) | as published | The share of a district's graduates enrolling at 4-year and 2-year colleges | Published by some districts only; shares are for the district's graduates, not one school. |
| High school graduates enrolled in Texas higher educationTexas Higher Education Coordinating Board | classes of 2012–2024 | Where each Texas high school's graduates enrolled the following fall: each Texas college, UT Austin and Texas A&M, and Texas 4-year colleges | Texas public and independent colleges only. Shares are of trackable graduates: graduates the state could look up in its college records (those with a usable ID), whether or not they enrolled; they are hidden when fewer than 10 could be tracked. Trackable graduates found at no Texas college that fall (for example, at a college outside Texas, or not enrolled) are "not found"; statewide that is about half of them. THECB groups colleges where few of a class enrolled as "Other 4-year" or "Other 2-year" colleges; in older classes these groups mix public and independent colleges. Earlier classes are in the full report. |
| Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR)Texas Education Agency | school years ending 2019–2025 | Economically disadvantaged share, STAAR end-of-course results, and SAT and ACT averages and participation of Texas high schools | Each class's figures are from the school year it graduated (the class of 2024: the 2023–24 school year); SAT and ACT figures describe that graduating class. |
| Common Core of Data (CCD)National Center for Education Statistics | school years ending 2025 | The Texas school directory (names, districts, counties), enrollment, and the share of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch | County from the NCES EDGE school locations. The low-income share is the 2024–25 CCD value for every class, including earlier ones, and is labeled with that year. The school charts plot each class against TAPR's economically disadvantaged share of the school year it graduated instead (classes before TAPR's first loaded year use the CCD share). |
How schools are matched
State files identify schools by their 14-digit CDS code. UC and CSU identify schools by name and their own codes, so each UC and CSU record is matched to a CDS code by name and city within the county, with hand-checked corrections for the cases a name match gets wrong. Charter schools that changed district codes are followed to their current code.
Small numbers
UC hides counts under 3 and the state hides college-going counts under 11. WhoGotIn shows no rate when a school had fewer than 10 applicants or a count is hidden, and says "too few applicants to report" instead of guessing. A hidden count is never shown as zero.
How Texas colleges get their type
THECB names each college a Texas high school's graduates enrolled at with a six-digit FICE code. WhoGotIn matches each code to the federal college list (IPEDS) through the first six digits of the college's OPE ID, leaving out branch campuses and administrative offices. A few codes cannot be matched that way, because a university and its system office share one code, or because THECB names a community college by a campus or district code (Dallas College, Lone Star, San Jacinto, Tarrant, Texas State Technical College and others), which WhoGotIn matches to the college's federal record. WhoGotIn matches these by hand (data/reference/fice_overrides.csv). Before 2020, Dallas College's figures sum its seven former DCCCD colleges and Texas State Technical College's earlier years sum its campuses; each class year is listed as THECB counted it:
- San Jacinto College (code 000090)
- Alamo Colleges Northwest Vista (code 000307)
- Alamo Colleges Northeast Lakeview (code 000309)
- Tarrant County College (code 000326)
- Lone Star College (code 000717)
- Lone Star College (code 000719)
- Lone Star College (code 000720)
- Lone Star College (code 000721)
- Lone Star College (code 000722)
- Lone Star College (code 000819)
- Lone Star College (code 000821)
- Lone Star College (code 000823)
- Abilene Christian University (code 003537)
- Dallas College (code 003561)
- University of North Texas (code 003594)
- Texas A&M (code 003632)
- TCU (code 003636)
- Texas Southmost College (code 003643)
- Texas Tech (code 003644)
- Galveston College (code 006662)
- Brazosport College (code 007857)
- Dallas College (code 008503)
- Dallas College (code 008504)
- Dallas College (code 008510)
- Tarrant County College (code 008897)
- Tarrant County College (code 008899)
- Tarrant County College (code 008900)
- Tarrant County College (code 008901)
- Texas State Technical College (code 009225)
- Dallas College (code 009331)
- Texas State Technical College (code 009932)
- Tarrant County College (code 010964)
- San Jacinto College (code 012713)
- University of Houston–Downtown (code 012826)
- Dallas College (code 020774)
- Dallas College (code 021002)
- San Jacinto College (code 029137)
- Texas State Technical College (code 033965)
- Texas State Technical College (code 119642)
- Texas State Technical College (code 133965)
- Texas State Technical College (code 203634)
A college is 4-year when its Carnegie classification is a bachelor's, master's, doctoral or special-focus 4-year class, and 2-year otherwise, so a community college that awards a few bachelor's degrees counts as 2-year. A college without a Carnegie classification takes the federal level (4-year or 2-year). Public or private comes from the federal record.
A few THECB colleges have no federal match (branch campuses of four-year universities with no federal record of their own). WhoGotIn classified them by hand (data/reference/thecb_sectors.csv):
- Sul Ross Rio Grande College · Public 4-year
- TX Tech HSC-El Paso · Public 4-year
- Texas A&M University at Galveston · Public 4-year
- Texas A&M University-Texarkana · Public 4-year
- University. of North Texas at Dallas · Public 4-year
Accuracy and corrections
WhoGotIn is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any of the publishers above or any school or college. Their files can contain errors, and our own steps can add some. The ones to know:
- A UC or CSU record matched to the wrong school, most often when a school changed its name or code.
- Hidden counts: a campus rate can rest on an estimate of the hidden admits, and pooled years blur change from year to year.
- College lists read from school documents partly by automated means; lists not yet checked by hand are marked as not verified.
- Federal figures that lag a year or two, and sources that revise figures after we load them.
Check anything important against the original source or with the school or college. The Terms of Use explain that figures are provided as is. Found a mistake? Report an error.
What these numbers don't tell you
- Any one student's chances. These are school-wide figures from public files, not predictions.
- Private colleges. Stanford, USC, and the Ivies do not publish admissions by high school.
- Why a school's numbers differ. Who applies, which campuses they choose, and the size of the class all move the figures.