This Week In IPEDS (TWII)

ACTS Collection Dates and Required Institutions

NCES has received OMB approval to conduct the newly added IPEDS Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) survey component. The ACTS component has been added to IPEDS following the direction of a Presidential Memorandum entitled “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions” as well as a Secretary’s directive, both published on August 5, 2025. See previous This Week in IPEDS postings for more details (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/this-week-in-ipeds/328).

Institutions required to complete ACTS are those that are four-year degree-granting public, private for-profit, and private not-for-profit institutions that primarily award bachelor’s degrees or above (inclusive of institutions that award only graduate degrees).  Data are to be collected for the current 2025-26 academic year, as well as lookback years. Institutions may be exempted from completing ACTS in a particular year if they (1) were open admission or admitted 100 percent of applicants in that year, and (2) did not award non-need-based aid in that year.

The ACTS collection is opening on December 18, 2025, and will close to keyholders on March 18, 2026. A notification email is being sent to the keyholders and CEOs of institutions meeting the requirement criteria and are therefore required to report the ACTS data, with additional information concerning data to be collected. Required institutions will see the individual ACTS survey years shown in the list of required survey components, once logged into the DCS (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds).