Methodology
How rankings and directory data work
GetRecruited ranking pages are built from federal athletics and education datasets, then normalized into program and school profiles that can be compared across sport, gender, division, state, and conference scopes.
Every ranking page uses one primary metric at a time. The supporting stats on the page add context, but the order of programs comes only from the primary metric for that page.
Data sources
EADA athletics reporting
Program-level athletics finance and roster data comes from federal EADA reporting. That is the source for fields such as operating expenses, total revenue, roster size, and the school-level athletic aid totals used to estimate aid per athlete.
IPEDS and College Scorecard
School-level outcomes and affordability data come from IPEDS and College Scorecard. That includes average net price, retention rate, graduation rate, acceptance rate, Pell rate, and median earnings.
GetRecruited directory joins
Those federal datasets are joined with school, sport, conference, division, state, and URL metadata so ranking pages can link directly into program and school profiles.
How percentile scores work
Investment, affordability, and academic scores are percentile-based relative measures, not raw grades pulled from a source dataset. A program is compared against peers in the same sport and gender so that a soccer program is not benchmarked against football or volleyball.
The scoring pipeline first percentile-ranks the underlying inputs, combines those normalized inputs into a composite, then percentile-ranks the composite again within the relevant comparison set. Letter grades are derived from those final percentiles.
Metric definitions
Which ranking pages are published
GetRecruited does not publish every possible metric and scope combination. A ranking page is only created when the scoped set has enough programs to be useful and the metric coverage is strong enough to avoid thin or misleading pages.
In the current rollout, a page generally needs at least 10 programs in scope and at least 70% non-null coverage for the primary metric. That gating keeps ranking pages focused on scopes that can sustain a real editorial point of view.
Refresh cadence and limitations
Directory data is rebuilt on a regular cadence. When a page says “Data last updated,” that refers to the timestamp of the current underlying data build rather than the deploy date.
Reported aid, revenue, expenses, and outcomes are directional and should be used as comparison inputs rather than guarantees. School-level academic and affordability fields describe the institution as a whole, not just one team. Program-level athletics finance data is also dependent on institutional reporting quality.