TRANSPARENCY
About & methodology
How we assess the support a college provides to transgender students, why some areas count more than others, and how each final score is calculated.
We ask the people who already handle each topic.
If you're at a college and our email reached you: we ask about 50 questions across ten topics, by email or a short video call, whichever is easier.
- LGBTQ+ center / resource office — campus climate, student organizations, support programs, policies
- Office of DEI — institutional policies, anti-discrimination efforts, training, accountability
- Housing & residential life — gender-inclusive housing, roommate policies, safety procedures
- Student health center — hormone therapy access, provider training, referrals, insurance coverage
- Counseling center — staff training, mental health resources, trans-affirming counseling
- Campus safety / Title IX office — harassment reporting, discrimination investigations, safety policies
- Current students — lived experience, in their own words
- Admissions — application forms, chosen names and pronouns
Nothing is published with a named individual's identity attached, and a school can ask for a re-rating any time its policies change.
THE RUBRIC
Ten categories, weighted by real-world impact.
Every category receives a score from 0 to 5 using the same rubric. Categories are not treated as equally important: housing, healthcare, campus protections, and accountability have greater weight because they can directly affect safety, daily life, and access to help. The final weighted score is out of 100. This approach does not mean lower-weight categories are unimportant; it means a strong score in one area cannot fully offset serious gaps in a more consequential area.
| Category | Weight | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Campus culture & nondiscrimination | 15% | Sets the baseline for protection and institutional climate. |
| Names, pronouns & ID changes | 10% | Affects everyday interactions and administrative systems. |
| Housing | 15% | Directly affects where and how safely a student lives. |
| Bathrooms & facilities | 5% | Important daily access issue, but narrower in scope than housing. |
| Healthcare | 15% | Can determine whether students can access affirming care. |
| Mental health | 10% | Important support for wellbeing and crisis response. |
| Classroom environment | 5% | Shapes the academic experience and faculty interactions. |
| Student organizations | 5% | Measures community and peer support opportunities. |
| Athletics/activities | 5% | Important for participation, but not equally relevant to every student. |
| Transparency & accountability | 15% | Measures whether protections are documented and whether the school owns its gaps. |
For each category, we divide the category rating by 5 and multiply it by that category’s weight. Adding the ten category contributions produces the weighted score out of 100. A documented Title IX religious exemption is then shown clearly and subtracts 15 points from the score, with the result floored at 0. State and city policy context is displayed separately and does not change the score.
What the 0–5 score means
0 — No support / harmful policies
No support is available, or the relevant policy is actively harmful.
1 — Very limited support
Some support exists, but it is highly limited.
2 — Inconsistent
Some resources exist, but support is inconsistent.
3 — Basic expectations
The school meets basic expectations for support.
4 — Strong support
The school provides strong support across the category.
5 — Excellent
Support is comprehensive and well established.
| Weighted score | Band |
|---|---|
| 90–100 | High support |
| 75–89 | Generally supportive |
| 60–74 | Mixed |
| 40–59 | Limited support |
| 0–39 | Poor support |
CONTEXT VS. SCORE
Not every number changes the rating.
Two things outside a school's control are shown alongside its score as context, and never change its band: the state's LGBTQ legal climate (0–4) and the local city government's LGBTQ-friendliness (out of 100, via the HRC Municipal Equality Index).
If a city has no published score, it is shown as “Not enough data” rather than treated as zero.
A Title IX religious exemption covering gender and sexuality is different. It is flagged visibly before you expand a school's entry, and it directly subtracts 15 points from that school's weighted score before the band is assigned.
A LIMIT OF THE PROJECT
We don't pretend a school can't overstate itself.
Most of what matters here is documented policy and provision, which a school can answer accurately. Where an answer can be checked against published policy, it is checked. Where it can't, the rating reports what the school told us and claims nothing more.
If a school isn't listed, we don't have an answer yet. Schools are added as they respond to the survey.