SpearMatch - Get the college list a $300/hr counselor builds, for free

SpearMatch started the moment I sat down with my son to build his college list and realized how scattered and cumbersome the whole process was. I'm an immigrant mom with 20+ years in software engineering, Amazon and American Express among others. I'm used to working with complex data problems. But even I found the college search genuinely frustrating. The tools out there either required a school subscription, hid useful features behind account signups, or gave you rankings with no real strategy attached. None of them told you why a school was or wasn't right for your kid, let alone what to actually do about it. I kept thinking: why doesn't something like this exist? So I built it. SpearMatch takes a student's real profile and returns a tiered college list with Early Decision flags, financial aid signals, and school-specific tips. The kind of guidance a good counselor gives. Completely free. Building it was messier than I expected. Not all colleges submit Common Data Set data, and collecting it even for the ones that do was a real grind. At some point I had to rethink how the matching engine worked so it could still give useful results when CDS data wasn't available, pulling from IPEDS and other public sources instead. It took longer than planned, but it's why the tool covers 1,300+ schools and not just the ones with clean data. The whole point is pretty simple. Your college future shouldn't depend on your zip code or how much your family can spend on a private counselor. If you give it a try, I'd love to know what you think.