Conjoint analysis
Discover your real preferences
Ask a family what matters in a college and you will hear a tidy list. Watch them choose between real options and a different picture emerges. This tool presents a handful of head-to-head trade-offs — cost against prestige, distance against fit — and infers the weights you actually act on, so your college list reflects your true priorities.
Sample data, running live in your browser. The inferred weights are estimates, not guarantees.
The conjoint lab
Pick the college you'd actually prefer in each trade-off. Watch your revealed preferences emerge on the right after every choice — then compare them to what you said would matter.
How this worksConjoint analysis, and the revealed-vs-stated gap▾
Conjoint analysis uncovers how someone truly weighs competing factors. Rather than asking “how important is cost?” — where nearly everyone says “very” — it presents realistic colleges that force trade-offs and infers your priorities from the choices you make.
Your stated preferences are what you say matters; your revealed preferences are what your choices show matters. The two often diverge, and that gap is the interesting part — it makes for a more honest conversation about fit.
Each task pits hypothetical colleges against each other, varying five attributes (cost, selectivity, distance, size, prestige). From your picks we fit a simple multinomial-logit model and read off each attribute's relative importance.
If these were the only options, which would you choose?
Revealed importance (live)
How much each factor has swung your choices so far.
Make your first choice to see your preferences begin to emerge.
Stated preferences
Before (or after) seeing your choices play out, declare how much you think each factor matters. Drag each slider.
Answer 3 more tasks to unlock the revealed-vs-stated comparison.
These are estimates, not guarantees. A short exercise over a handful of trade-offs gives a directional read on your priorities — a prompt for discussion, not a verdict.