Free, fast, and helpful information for college

CollegesRef is an independent college discovery, evaluation, and comparison platform. We combine verified institutional data — admissions, cost, outcomes, and location — with a clearly labeled editorial view and explainable similarity tools.

The public site separates three layers on every profile: source-backed facts, CollegesRef editorial context, and personalized tools such as backpack lists and colleges-like-this matching. Pages that do not meet our quality bar stay out of search indexes until they are reviewed.

Students and families were drowning in marketing noise, paid rankings, and incomplete spreadsheets. Counselors were stretched thin. We wanted one place where anyone could compare schools on evidence, understand trade-offs, and share a shortlist without paying for basic information.

CollegesRef is free to use because access to trustworthy college data should not depend on zip code or budget. We built it for applicants, parents, teachers, and counselors who need speed, clarity, and sources they can verify.

Jefferson Huang partnered with founder ARIN during the platform build. He helped shape the database-driven data model and structure-driven markup that powers CollegesRef search — organizing institutional facts so they can be queried, filtered, and surfaced reliably across college profiles and directory pages.

His work on normalized schema design, searchable field structure, and consistent data markup gave the search functionality a solid foundation. We credit Jefferson for the engineering behind how students find and compare colleges on CollegesRef today.