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Data Sources and Verification

Where the facts come from, how they are checked, and how they are kept current.

Last updated 12 October 2026

Sources we use

  • Program facts — degree titles, concentrations, curriculum, capstones, admissions materials, deadlines, tuition, fees, production costs, equipment policies and funding — come from each school's own pages: film school and department pages, catalogs and bulletins, graduate and undergraduate admissions, bursar and tuition tables, financial aid and funding pages, and production or equipment handbooks.
  • Institutional identity (official name, address, public or private control, website) comes from the U.S. Department of Education's IPEDS directory data, published through College Navigator.
  • Institutional accreditation is recorded as the school states it on its own accreditation page. We do not imply that film degrees need a single specialized accreditor, and we never transfer one department's accreditation to another program.
  • Images. Logos and campus photographs come from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, matched to the school by its IPEDS identifier, under free licenses with credit shown. We do not use stock photos of generic film sets as school facilities. See image credits.
  • Other directories, rankings and forums may help us discover a candidate program, but never establish a fact.

How a program is researched

  1. Discover a candidate (for example from IPEDS completions in film and cinema fields).
  2. Confirm the exact award and title on an official page.
  3. Confirm eligibility and identify official concentrations.
  4. Verify delivery and attendance requirements.
  5. Extract admissions and portfolio instructions, item by item.
  6. Extract tuition, fees and production costs, each with its basis and year.
  7. Extract deadlines with year and intake as printed.
  8. Record institutional accreditation as published.
  9. Extract funding components and named awards.
  10. Save every source URL with a verbatim quote, deduplicate, then publish.

Verification

A script re-fetches each source page and searches for the stored quote. Only facts whose quote is found on the live official page (or that an editor has confirmed manually) are shown. Pages that block automated access are not worked around; facts from them are left unverified and the gap is recorded. Facts older than twelve months are flagged for re-verification.

The catalog was last regenerated on 2026-10-13.

Known limitations

  • Some catalogs and school sites block automated access; their programs may be missing or have fewer verified facts.
  • Many schools do not publish production costs, equipment terms or stipend amounts. We show these as not published.
  • Deadlines are often printed without a year; we keep the printed text and do not assume the year.

Spotted an error? Suggest an update with the official page.