Data Sources & Accuracy
Always confirm with the school. ArtsCompass gathers information about dance programs from public sources and shows you where each piece came from and when it was checked. Schools change their deadlines, requirements and policies, and our information can be incomplete, out of date or wrong. The school's own website, portal and communications are the authority. Where they differ from ArtsCompass, the school is right.
We are independent
ArtsCompass is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for any college, university, conservatory, dance company, studio, intensive or organization listed in the Service. School names, program names and logos are the property of their owners and are used only to identify them.
Where the information comes from
| Source | What it provides |
|---|---|
| Schools' own websites and published documents | Deadlines, audition and application requirements, faculty, program structure and styles. This is our primary source for anything a family acts on. |
| U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard and IPEDS) | Institution-level cost, net price, admission and completion figures. These are federal averages for the whole institution, not dance-specific, and not any family's actual cost. |
| Public event and organization pages | Intensives, auditions, competitions and events, their dates and published prices. |
| Public talks, interviews and articles | Commentary about what programs look for. We summarize it in our own words and label it as commentary, not the school's confirmed information. |
| Public professional biographies | Where working dancers trained and went on to. Used only in aggregate research and placement information. |
| Consultants | Professional judgment and notes, which are attributed as opinion, not fact. |
How we check it
Information that families act on, such as deadlines and requirements, is taken from the source page word for word, checked by software against that page, and read independently a second time. A fact is marked verified only when those checks agree, or when a person on our team has confirmed it. Everything else waits for human review. We recheck school pages on a schedule and flag changes. These checks reduce errors; they do not eliminate them.
What the labels mean
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Verified / checked date | Confirmed against the source on that date. The school may have changed it since. |
| Needs check / unconfirmed | Gathered but not yet confirmed. Treat with extra caution. |
| Est. | An estimate or projection, for example last year's date carried forward before the school posts this year's. |
| "Sources disagree" | We found conflicting information. Ask the school. |
| Our classification | Our own categorization, such as program focus. It is an interpretation, not the school's statement. |
| Tracked (vs. maintained) program | A program we show with baseline information only. It has not been fully researched. |
| ⚠ rule check (e.g. "2:10 — cap is 1:00") | An automatic comparison of your material with a rule we read from the school's own wording (a length cap, how recently it was filmed, file or link). It is a prompt to check, never a ruling: it can miss a rule or apply one the school means differently. Marked "unconfirmed rule" when the rule itself has not been confirmed. The school's page is the authority. |
| Blank (—) | Not yet captured. A blank never means "no." |
What the information does and does not mean
- It is descriptive, not a ranking. Information about faculty, alumni, styles, focus, or where dancers trained or went on to describes what public sources say. It does not rate a program's quality or predict any dancer's success, and it is not an endorsement.
- Commentary and consultant notes are opinions. They reflect the views of the speaker or consultant, not facts confirmed by the school, and not our views.
- Costs are not quotes. Tuition, fees, net price and event prices are as published or as averaged by the government. Your actual cost will differ.
- Planning features are aids. Calendars, reminders, urgency markers and "done" and "missing" indicators help you organize. They cannot replace reading each school's instructions. See Section 4 of our Terms.
Corrections, removal requests and copyright
Report an error
Signed-in users can report a problem on any program page. Anyone else, including schools, can email [email protected] with the program, the information that is wrong, and a link to the correct source. We aim to review reports within 10 business days, and we correct or remove information we cannot support with a first-party source.
Information about you
If you are a faculty member, dancer, speaker or other person named in ArtsCompass and want information about you corrected or removed, email us with the page and the information. We will review it promptly and, where appropriate, correct or remove it, and keep it from being re-collected.
Copyright
We respect intellectual property rights. If you believe material in the Service infringes your copyright, send a notice to our designated agent at [email protected] (subject: "Copyright notice") that includes: your physical or electronic signature; identification of the copyrighted work; identification of the material you claim infringes and where it appears in the Service; your contact information; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law; and a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act for the owner. If we remove material in response, the person who posted it may send a counter-notice as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides. We will terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.