PREMIER COLLEGE GUIDANCE premiercollegeguide.com
California's premier college advisory firm · Free tools, no signup

Three questions parents actually ask.

Built from years of guiding families through admissions and financial aid — and from listening to the questions parents debate online when they can't find real answers anywhere else.

Question 1

"How is my kid actually doing?"

College Readiness Assessment

An honest five-minute diagnostic. Sixteen dimensions across the five phases of college prep. Named gaps, ranked priorities, and a straight answer on whether you need outside help.

Start the assessment →
Question 2

"Which schools should we look at?"

PCG School Atlas

Explore 1,000+ colleges through PCG's strategic lens — selectivity, leverage tier, cost progression by income, graduation outcomes. Build a smart application list before you commit to anything.

Launch the Atlas →
Question 3

"Is college even worth it anymore?"

AI Impact Simulator

Model how AI is reshaping the career value of different degree paths. Not a prediction — a way to think clearly about how much to invest in college given what's changing.

Run the simulator →
Why we built these

Most of these tools exist because we kept seeing the same questions on Reddit, College Confidential, and Paying for College 101 — and nobody had built anything that could actually answer them for a specific family. So we did.

Workshop library.

Interactive presentations on the topics families spend the most time researching. Self-paced. Click anything. Roughly 30–40 minutes each if you explore everything.

Most college tools treat California like an afterthought.

Ours don't. Every tool here is built around what California families actually face — Cal Grant, UC vs CSU aid logic, the OOS public surcharge, and the donut-hole income range where middle-class families get hit hardest.

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PCG-verified schools
Hand-verified 2026–27 data for the schools California families actually apply to — COA, Cal Grant treatment, merit posture confirmed.
100s
Family case studies
Every recommendation, benchmark, and strategic framework comes from real families we've guided through admissions and financial aid.
SAI 2026–27
Current aid formula
Student Aid Index calculations updated for 2026–27. No tool here uses the legacy EFC framework — it's been gone since 2024.
10+
Free, connected tools
No account required. No email gating. Built to be genuinely useful — even if you never become a client.

Every tool, by category.

For families who know what they need. Each link launches the tool directly.