About Us
Our Mission: We use data to empower people to make better decisions about careers and education.
Our Product: GradReports is a product of Optimal, formerly known as SR Education Group until January 2020, when we rebranded.
We created GradReports as a tool to help students choose a college or graduate program that meets their needs. We do this by providing over 30,000 in-depth student reviews as well as college rankings for popular majors based on the salaries of alumni with those specific degrees. These are the first college rankings to use by-major student earnings data available for the first time from the US Department of Education.
We believe that making college outcomes-based data more accessible, transparent, and easily comparable will allow more people to choose educational paths that lead them to success and don't burden them with insurmountable debt. If you would like to learn more about our advertising and editorial policies, please see the bottom of this page.
Understanding the difficulties of obtaining a quality, affordable education is what inspired founder and CEO Sung Rhee to found Optimal in 2004. He saw a need to create sites dedicated to providing transparent, data-driven information to empower people to make better decisions for their education and careers. He knows prestige doesn't always translate to quality, and Sung doesn't want to see students get a raw deal.
Outside of work, Sung enjoys playing basketball and adding to his collection of Gundam figurines. Some of his favorite college memories include his time as a cartoonist for The Harvard Crimson!
Our Team
Our Advertising Policy
GradReports makes money through lead generation. This means that we connect visitors with schools they have expressed interest in. Visitors can indicate interest in a school by filling out a contact information form and giving us permission to share their information with a particular school. For more information about how we use your data, see our privacy policy. The money we receive from schools allows us to conduct and publish detailed research into colleges and universities so prospective students are empowered to make informed choices about their education.
Our Editorial Policy
The schools with whom we have an advertising relationship are referred to as "partner schools" throughout GradReports. We ensure that our relationships with partner schools do not hinder our editorial integrity. Partner schools are clearly labeled as such throughout the site, and we never show our partner schools any preferential treatment when developing our ranking lists.
All schools featured on our site are accredited by accrediting bodies recognized by the United States Department of Education. When creating our content, we always conduct extensive research in order to ensure that we provide accurate and current information about program offerings and tuition costs. This information comes directly from schools' official websites or representatives. We also source information from government databases and agencies such as: