Comparison Groups

Selecting Comparison Groups

Overview Video

View our brief overview video on considerations for selecting comparison groups.

A key benefit of your NSSE Institutional Report is the ability to customize your comparison groups. Using NSSE’s online Report Form, you can select the institutions that are most relevant to your campus from the pool of current-and prior-year NSSE participants.

Do you have to customize your comparison groups? No.
Should you? Yes!

Tailored comparison groups help ensure your results are meaningful, actionable, and aligned with your institutional priorities.

How to Get Started

Gathering suggestions from relevant stakeholders at your institution can not only provide you with ideas, but it can also start generating interest in your upcoming release of results.

Review existing peer or aspirational peer lists.
The office of the President or Provost, or the assessment, planning, or institutional research offices at your institution may maintain this list.
Consult your campus strategic plan.
Identify initiatives that NSSE data could inform and discuss the comparison group selection with the strategic planning committee.
Engage academic leadership.
Academic deans or department chairs may suggest meaningful comparison groups to make results disaggregated by major field more relevant.
Share draft groups for feedback.
Provide drafts of potential comparison groups to administrators, faculty, and student groups to refine your comparisons and garner interest in results across your institution.

View NSSE’s list of participating institutions available for inclusion in comparison groups.

Approaches to Building Comparison Groups

A variety of goals drive comparison group selection. Below are common approaches and real examples from NSSE participants.

Peer Groups
The most common approach is to identify institutions like your own, based on shared characteristics.

Examples include:
• Accreditation peers
• Carnegie classification
• High part-time enrollment institutions
• Highly residential institutions
• IPEDS benchmark peers
• Primarily online institutions
• Similar settings (suburban, urban, etc.)
• State system peers
• 30-50% Pell recipient institutions

Aspirational Groups
Institutions may assess themselves relative to colleges and universities they view as exemplars.

Examples include:
• FYE recognition
• Times Higher Education Ranked peers
• Top 100-125 National Universities
• Top 50 U.S. News Liberal Arts
• U.S. News Top 100

Overlap Groups
These comparisons focus on institutions that compete for similar students, faculty, or resources.

Examples include:
• Neighboring institutions
• Regional competitors
• Top institutions applicants enroll at
• Top institutions with admissions overlap

Pre-Existing Groups
Institutions may compare themselves with members of a pre-existing group, especially those sharing a common mission or goals.

Examples include:
• University system
• Academic Consortium
• Athletic conference
• HBCU’s
• HSI’s
• Jesuit institutions
• Land Grant institutions
• Polytechnic focus
• Religious affiliation
• Women’s colleges

Webinar: How Are You Building Your NSSE 2026 Comparison Groups?

Join NSSE staff and users as they share how they're approaching the redesigned Carnegie classifications and building NSSE 2026 comparison groups.

View Webinar

Carnegie Migrations of NSSE 25-26 Institutions

The Carnegie Classification was substantially redesigned in 2025, prompting institutions to reconsider their benchmarking and comparison groups. To support this transition, NSSE mapped how recently participating institutions were reclassified relative to 2021 categories. Results show notable variation, suggesting prior comparison groups may be difficult to replicate. Institutions are encouraged to review the new classifications and revisit their benchmarking strategies. As always, NSSE staff are available to assist!

Interactive Visualization

Important Considerations

Keep it simple – We offer many criteria for building comparison groups. However, selecting one or two dimensions such as sector (public or private), size, region, or institutional type is often better than basing group selection on too many criteria. Keeping selection criteria simple may ease comprehension of the group and interpretation of results.
Consider group size – Smaller groups may offer more precise comparability, while larger groups may be more stable, especially across multiple NSSE administrations. Thus, a mix of both small and large groups may be most beneficial.
Maintain stability over time – While we encourage you to periodically review comparison groups, using similar comparison groups over time will be valuable in assessing change. In most cases, using as many of the same comparison group institutions as possible across consecutive NSSE administrations can be most useful. The ability to include prior-year participants offers another way to enhance comparison group stability.

Creating Your Comparison Groups

Report Form Tutorial

View our tutorials on using the NSSE Report Form to select your comparison groups.

View Report Form Tutorial Videos

Current-year participants, will receive an email when the Report Form is available on the NSSE Institution Interface.

You can build comparison groups in three ways:

Select individual institutions from the list of NSSE participants.
Select institutions based on institutional characteristics.
Select institutions based on characteristics and then add or remove individual institutions to refine the group.

You may return to the Report Form and edit your choices as often as you like before it closes. You can also generate an email that lists your selections, and you will receive a confirmation email once the form closes.

If You Choose Not to Customize

We strongly recommend customization to maximize the value of your results.

In a recent audit of institutional customization patterns, most institutions customized some or all of their comparison groups, and about one-third fully customized all three. Only a minority chose not to customize.

If you choose not to customize a given group, the following comparisons will be selected for you:

Group 1:
All other prior- and current-year NSSE institutions within your U.S Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) geographic region and IPEDS control classification. For consortium-participating institutions, this group includes the other consortium members. Canadian universities are compared with prior- and current-year Canadian institutions.

Group 2:
All other prior- and current-year NSSE participants sharing your 2025 Carnegie Institutional Classification.

Group 3:
For U.S. institutions this includes all other prior- and current-year U.S. NSSE institutions. Canadian universities receive all other prior- and current-year Canadian and U.S. institutions.

Topical Module Group:
If you administered a Topical Module, this group includes all other prior- and current-year institutions that administered the same module.