Institutional Research and Strategic Analytics

Common Data Set

The Common Data Set (CDS) initiative is a collaborative effort among data providers in the higher education community and college guide publishers as represented by College Board, Peterson's, U.S. News & World Report, and Wintergreen Orchard House.

The goal is to have each institution complete the CDS once each year and make copies available to the interested publishers, who would then require only a relatively small amount of additional information. In addition to reducing the cost and time of institutional researchers to respond to publisher's surveys, the CDS represents a standardization of data elements and definitions across publications thus minimizing conflicting counts and other data irregularities.

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