Data Sources & Attributions

Many of the figures My School Advisor shows you — wages, job-growth projections, college costs and debt, unemployment by major, and financial-aid estimates — come from public U.S. government data and a small number of other third-party sources. This page lists the data sources that power the Service and provides the attributions some of those sources ask us to carry.

These figures are provided as context, not as a prediction or guarantee of earnings, debt, admission, aid, or employment. They are point-in-time estimates; always verify the specifics with the official source or your school’s financial-aid office.

1. U.S. government data (public domain)

Works of the U.S. federal government are not subject to copyright (17 U.S.C. § 105). We use the following public data and cite each source as a courtesy:

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)— occupational wages and employment (OEWS), 10-year Employment Projections, and industry employment history (CES). Growth figures shown for some occupations are computed by us from the BLS published employment counts.
• U.S. Department of Education, College Scorecard— institution tuition and fees, net price, median graduate debt, and completion rates.
• U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) — Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) — institution directory and program completions by field of study.
• Federal Student Aid (FAFSA / U.S. Department of Education) — the Student Aid Index (SAI) and Pell Grant formulas and tables. Aid figures shown are our estimate computed from the published federal formula; your official SAI comes from the FAFSA.
• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services— the annual federal poverty guidelines used in aid-eligibility tests.
• O*NET, U.S. Census Bureau, and HUD— occupational classifications and geographic crosswalks used to organize the data above.

2. Third-party sources

The following sources ask that their content carry a specific attribution, which we provide here:

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York— unemployment and underemployment rates by college major, from “The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates.”
  © 2026 Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Content from the New York Fed subject to the Terms of Use at newyorkfed.org.
• Urban Institute — Education Data Portal— used to assemble our IPEDS institution directory and program-completion data. Data accessed through the Education Data Portal is made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0, and is attributed to the Urban Institute.

3. Trademarks

“CSS Profile” and “College Board” are trademarks of the College Board. We reference them only to describe the actual financial-aid forms and institutions they identify. My School Advisor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the College Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Urban Institute, or any government agency named on this page. All other product and organization names are used for identification only and remain the property of their respective owners.

4. Data vintage & accuracy

Public datasets are released on their own schedules, so the figures you see reflect the most recent release we have ingested (for example, wages and costs from recent reporting years and employment projections covering a 10-year window). We refresh them periodically. Because the underlying data updates over time and our estimates are simplified, treat every number as an approximation and confirm anything important with the original source.

5. More information

See our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Questions about the data or an attribution? Contact support@myschooladvisor.app.