# A college search — twelve schools, compared from official sources Recipe No. 14, Study and exams. From The know.sh Cookbook: https://know.sh/cookbook/college-search - For: a high-school senior and a parent narrowing twelve colleges down to the ones worth applying to - You bring: a list of twelve colleges, the major the senior is leaning towards, a rough idea of what the family can pay, and the AI assistant you already use - You get: a college shelf with a document per school, every deadline, requirement and cost linked to the college’s own page, your visit notes in your own words, and a comparison document with the finalists side by side - Time: an evening for your assistant to build the shelf, a weekend to check it, then half an hour after each visit or new deadline - Keep it: private while you work; share one document by a read-only link By October of senior year the list has twelve colleges on it and the facts are in forty browser tabs. One school's early action deadline is 1 November and another's is 15 November; one wants the CSS Profile as well as the FAFSA; one says it is test-optional and its supplement asks for scores anyway. The spreadsheet a parent started in August has three versions and no sources. This recipe gives each college a research document with the same findings in the same order: deadlines, requirements, costs, aid, the programme, outcomes, your visit notes and the questions still open. Whichever assistant you use, Claude, ChatGPT or a local model, researches all twelve from official sources and builds the shelf, every number linked to the page it came from. You check it in the editor, run each net price calculator yourselves, add what you saw on the visits, star the finalists, and keep a comparison document you can both read. The applications, the essays and the financial forms stay where they are submitted. know.sh holds what you learned about each college and where you learned it. ## What you will use - **Shelf**: One shelf, *College search — class of 2027*, with what matters to you as its line: "Environmental science, under 8,000 students, within a day’s drive." - **Research document**: One document per college, titled with its name, plus *The finalists, side by side* for the comparison tables. - **Finding**: The same eight findings for every college; confirmed facts filed as *Evidence*, anything unconfirmed as *Question*, deadlines marked **Key**. - **Your AI assistant**: Researches each college from its own pages, its Common Data Set and the College Scorecard, fills in the eight findings with source links, and builds the comparison tables. - **The editor**: Where you check each number against its source, write the visit notes, and correct what the assistant got wrong. - **Margin notes**: Where the two of you see a college differently: the note sits beside the line it is about. - **Star and Focus**: Star the finalists; put the college with the next deadline in **Focus** for its last week. - **Public link**: A password link to the comparison document for the other parent or the school counsellor, with your cost estimates left out. ## Method ### 1. Decide whose library it is and what matters A know.sh library has one owner. In this recipe it is the parent's, and the two of you work on it together at one screen; the senior reads the comparison from a link. Before anything is filed, agree the three or four things that decide the list — the major, the size, the distance, what you can pay — and put them in the shelf's line. Then connect your assistant, following the support page for Claude, ChatGPT or a local model, and give it the twelve colleges. Ask for a document per college with these findings in this order: **Deadlines**, **Requirements**, **Cost of attendance**, **Aid and net price**, **The programme**, **Outcomes**, **Visit notes** and **Questions for admissions**. ### 2. Have it research each college from official sources Ask your assistant to research each college on the web and fill in its findings, one college at a time. Name the sources you trust: the college's own admissions and financial aid pages, its most recent Common Data Set (section C for admission, G for costs, H for aid), and the US Department of Education's College Scorecard for graduation rates, typical debt and earnings. Rankings, forums and admissions blogs are not sources for a number. Ask for the year beside every figure ("2026–27 cost of attendance") and a link beside every line, and for "not found" rather than a guess. This needs an assistant with web search; Claude and ChatGPT have it, and many local set-ups do not. ### 3. Check every number in the editor Now sit down with the college's pages open and press **Edit** on each document. Check each deadline, fee, requirement and cost against its source. Numbers change every year and colleges update pages over the summer; if the Common Data Set and the admissions page disagree, the admissions page is usually the newer. Mark each deadline you mean to use as **Key**. Change a finding to *Question* where you could not confirm it, and put what you need to ask in **Questions for admissions**: whether a campus job counts against aid, whether the major is capped. Revisions show which lines are still the assistant's. ### 4. Run each net price calculator yourselves Every college has a net price calculator on its own website, and it gives a far better estimate for your family than the published cost. Run it for each college, on the college's site, and record only the result and the date in **Aid and net price**: "Estimated net price, 2027–28: $24,300. Calculator run 4 October." Note whether the college asks for the CSS Profile as well as the FAFSA, and its priority aid deadline. The calculator asks for income and savings; that goes into the college's site, not into know.sh. So do Social Security numbers, the FSA ID and every portal password. Write where they are kept, never what they are. ### 5. Write your own visit notes After each visit, virtual tour or information session, write **Visit notes** the same day, the senior first and in their own words: the class you sat in on, the dorm, whether you could see yourself there. The parent adds a paragraph underneath, marked as such. Highlight the line that matters most. Where you disagree, keep both. Select the line and leave a **Note**: "Mom liked the co-op programme; I thought the campus felt empty on a Friday." These notes are the part of the shelf no assistant can write, and in March they are the part you will reread. ### 6. Build the comparison and star the finalists Ask your assistant to read the twelve documents and add tables to *The finalists, side by side*: one finding for deadlines and requirements, one for costs and your net price estimates, one for the programme and outcomes. Each row should name the college document and finding number it came from. Check the rows against your corrected findings; fix any cell that is wrong. When you have your short list, **Star** those colleges. *Contents*, under *Starred*, is now the list you are applying to. Move the documents you ruled out to a second shelf rather than deleting them; a college you dropped in October sometimes comes back in December. ### 7. Keep application weeks in Focus, and the essays yours As each deadline comes near, put that college in **Focus** for its last week, and ask your assistant which starred colleges have something due in the next fourteen days. It can list each supplement's prompt and word limit from the college's page. It does not draft, outline or polish the essays. Application essays must be the student's own, and many applications ask you to attest that they are. Keep the drafts in whatever you write them in, not on this shelf. ### 8. Share the comparison on a password link Press **Share** on *The finalists, side by side*, set a password, choose *Never expire*, and send the link and the password separately to the senior, the other parent or the school counsellor. Leave out the costs finding so your estimates stay private. Readers see the tables without your highlights or notes, and cannot edit; what they think reaches you by message, and you file it. Keep the senior's name, grades and test scores off the shared document. After decisions arrive in spring, turn the link off. ## Prompts to try Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, make a shelf called “College search — class of 2027” with the line “Environmental science, under 8,000 students, within a day’s drive.” Add one document per college on this list, titled with its name, and give each these findings in this order: Deadlines; Requirements; Cost of attendance; Aid and net price; The programme; Outcomes; Visit notes; Questions for admissions. Leave them empty for now. Also add a document “The finalists, side by side”. Colleges: [paste your twelve]. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the eight findings in each starred document on my shelf “College search — class of 2027”. Recheck every deadline and application fee against the college’s own admissions page today, and leave a proposed note, citing the page, on any finding that no longer matches. Do not change the findings yourself. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model): > Using know.sh, read the documents on my shelf “College search — class of 2027” and list everything due in the next fourteen days, by college, with the finding it comes from. For each college with a supplement due, give the prompt and the word limit from the college’s page, and nothing else about the essay. ## Variations - Plan the visits as a road trip with a [group trip guide](/cookbook/trip-guide): one document for the route, each campus tour and overnight a finding. - Add a *Scholarships* document, one finding per outside scholarship with its deadline and a link to the sponsor’s own page. A scholarship that charges a fee to apply is a reason to stop. - Applying as a transfer student, the same shape works with section D of the Common Data Set in place of section C. - Once the senior is at college, their own [course study guide](/cookbook/study-guide) starts on a shelf of its own, in their own account. ## Where it falls short - Nothing here watches the colleges’ websites. A deadline that moves after you checked it stays wrong until you or your assistant check again. - The Common Data Set runs a year behind and not every college publishes one; Scorecard earnings and debt describe students who received federal aid and can be several years old. - One owner per library. The senior and the parent cannot both edit from their own accounts; one of you keeps it, and the other reads a link or sits alongside. - Web research needs an assistant with web search, and smaller local models call tools less reliably. Check what any assistant files; Revisions shows every change. ## A note on essays, money and the numbers The assistant can gather facts, lay out deadlines and build tables. It does not write, outline or edit the application essay or any short answer. Those must be the student's own work; many applications ask you to attest that they are, and an admission can be withdrawn over work that turns out not to be the applicant's own. Check each college's stated policy on AI in applications. Every number in this shelf is a lead to check against the college's own pages and its net price calculator before you rely on it; assistants make mistakes, and figures change every year. This is for organising your family's research, not financial or admissions advice. Keep Social Security numbers, FSA IDs, portal passwords, tax returns and bank statements out of know.sh altogether. Indexed under: College admissions, Common Data Set, College Scorecard, Net price calculators, Application deadlines, Financial aid, Application essays.