iPhone · iPad
Shortlist
Shortlist your schools. The college admissions hub for undergrad, grad, law, med, and MBA applicants — built around the way the work actually happens, not the way it feels in a spreadsheet.
What It Does
School-list management with reach, match, and safety auto-categorization. Per-school deadlines, urgency pills, application checklists, essay tracker, recommendation status per recommender, and a test-score advisor that tells you whether to submit.
24-dimension custom rankings across affordability, outcomes, graduation, equity, safety, diversity, institutional health, and student experience. User-weighted, persona-weighted, theme-grouped, and source-attributed. Public federal data only. Never paid placement.
Financial-aid award comparison side-by-side, with a true-net-cost calculator that uses HUD Fair Market Rents to bake in geography-aware living expenses. Award letter parser. Aid appeal packet builder.
Career and pathway exploration covering 1,016 occupations and 70 alternative pathways (college, trades, military, apprenticeships, employer direct-hire). 40-year ROI projection, ASVAB-to-civilian-pathway scorer, military MOS crosswalk, intake calendar, and reality-check engine that connects majors to actual labor-market outcomes.
Plans
Free
$0
Track up to 5 schools, basic checklist, deadline reminders, and one essay draft per school. Enough to evaluate the workflow before committing.
Pro
$4.99/mo or $29.99/yr
Unlimited schools, essay versioning, recommendation tracker, test-score advisor, financial-aid award comparison, supplement-overlap detection, and the 24-dimension custom rankings engine.
Family
$7.99/mo or $49.99/yr
Everything in Pro plus a read-only parent dashboard and multi-student support up to three students. One subscription per family.
Paid plans are planned with a 7-day free trial for eligible users. Subscriptions are managed by Apple. Pro and Family auto-renew unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
Methodology
Shortlist uses public federal data only — College Scorecard, IPEDS, BLS, ACS PUMS, NCES CIP, MAP State Equality Index, USDA Food Access Atlas, OCR Title IX, EADA, IRS 990, HUD FMR — across 24 ranking dimensions and 8 themes. Every number on a school card carries a source citation, vintage label, and pipeline-row count. Methodology disclosure lives inside the app and on this site. We do not accept payment for ranking placement, ever.
Privacy
Shortlist is local-first. School lists, essays, recommendation tracking, test scores, financial-aid offers, decisions, and notes are stored on your device through SwiftData. When iCloud and the signed app configuration are available, Shortlist uses Apple CloudKit private database sync for user-authored data. Shortlist does not require an account, does not use behavioral advertising, and does not sell admissions data.
Disclaimer
Shortlist is informational software. It does not provide admissions advice, financial-aid advice, legal advice, or guarantees of admission, scholarship, or aid outcomes. Public data may be delayed, incomplete, or revised. Verify all information against school websites, official offers, and qualified counselors before making enrollment decisions.