Colleges spill admissions secrets via new ACTS survey.
Published Date: 9/14/2026
Notice
Summary
Starting in winter 2025-26, colleges will share clearer info about their admissions through a new data collection called ACTS. This helps students and families understand how schools decide who gets in, making college choices easier and more transparent. Schools and the Department of Education will work together to roll this out over two years, with no direct cost to students but a big win for fairness and clarity.
Analyzed Economic Effects
4 provisions identified: 3 benefits, 1 costs, 0 mixed.
More detailed college admissions data
The ACTS collection will publish institution-level admissions information disaggregated by race-sex pairs, admissions test score quintiles, high school performance, and family income so students and families can better judge likelihood of admission. The Department plans to collect these data as part of the IPEDS 2025-26 Winter Collection to make transparency information available to prospective applicants and their families.
Some historical aid data may be missing
The Department noted institutions' records retention policies may prevent reporting of certain older financial aid data. It found aid data are likely available for 2025-26, 2024-25, 2023-24, and 2022-23, but data for 2021-22 are at risk of being unreportable.
Privacy safeguards for student data
ACTS uses a two-step collection where institutions create student-level files that are then aggregated locally or via RTI's tool so the Department will not possess student-level personally identifiable records. Data will be pseudonymized, raw files destroyed after quality checks, and any public or restricted releases reviewed and approved by the IES Disclosure Review Board before release.
Graduate admissions data split by field
For graduate admissions, ACTS will collect a similar set of admissions variables but disaggregated further by broad field of study, because graduate admissions decisions often vary across academic units. The collection does not gather the undergraduate contextual variables for graduate students.
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