How to Use Samantar

What it does

Type a career name (nurse, software engineer, electrician) or a credential (CPA, RN, BCBA, PMP, CDL-A) and pick from the typeahead. The career page then shows a Texas wage benchmarks table (BLS OEWS, p10 / p25 / Median / p75 / p90 across all 25 TX metros, fully sortable), the universities offering programs that feed this career, an Entry + Median salary tile pair, an AI Outlook write-up, recent Texas postings, and crosslinks to Jobs Trends and Compare for the same career.

The credential search is backed by an alternate-titles index of 62,900+ entries pulled from O*NET 28.2 plus a 100+ row founder-curated supplement. When the typeahead matches via an alternate title (e.g. you type BCBA), the result shows the canonical career name with a "matched: BCBA" hint underneath.

What feeds it

Career titles come from the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET (Occupational Information Network). Wage benchmarks come from BLS Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS). University programs and tuition come from IPEDS (the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) and the Texas THECB. The credential / license rail uses TDLR (Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation) for state-licensed trades.

What it is not

Wage benchmarks are statistical (median, percentiles), not personal projections. The list of universities is filtered to those with usable tuition data — see Schools with no tuition data for what's excluded and why.

What it does

Pick a degree program and the page shows you the list of accredited Texas institutions offering it, plus a sortable Texas graduate outcomes table from the federal College Scorecard (institution, award level, median 1-year and 10-year post-completion earnings), filtered by the level you picked (UG vs Grad). Below the universities table sits a Careers this degree leads to panel: every career the official program-to-career crosswalk maps to this degree program, laid out as a 3-column index for fast scanning.

What feeds it

Degree program classifications come from the federal NCES program taxonomy (the 2,142-program reference loaded from NCES). Tuition and aid data come from IPEDS. Texas graduate outcomes come from the federal College Scorecard. Career-to-degree mapping uses the official BLS / NCES program-to-career crosswalk.

What it is not

The graduate-outcomes data is statistical and historical, not a guarantee of your future earnings. Some institutions appear without earnings data because the federal Scorecard suppresses small graduating classes for privacy — those rows show a dash. Some institutions appear without tuition data; they're listed separately on the Schools with no tuition data page.

What it does

Four modes: compare the same degree across two universities, compare two different careers side by side, compare two different degrees, or compare a degree path against a non-degree path (apprenticeship, certificate, direct-entry). The output is a year-by-year financial trajectory for each option — total cost, breakeven year, ten-year cumulative earnings — so the comparison is rendered on identical assumptions instead of two ranked lists pretending to be comparable.

What feeds it

The same data sources as Degrees and Careers (IPEDS, BLS OEWS, THECB, College Scorecard), but rendered as a parallel comparison rather than a ranked list. Calculations use identical assumptions on both sides so the comparison is genuinely apples-to-apples.

What it is not

The compare view shows expected financial outcomes under standard assumptions. It does not predict your individual results, does not factor in personal preferences or location constraints, and does not weight non-financial factors (lifestyle fit, family situation, regional ties). Use it as a starting point for the conversation, not the conclusion.

What it does

Pick a career in the sticky filter row at the top. The page renders, in order: Filters (career, metro, experience level, industry); Also known as (alternate titles + credential abbreviations); Paths into this career (every credentialed route in — degree, certificate, apprenticeship, direct-entry); a Salary stats tile with its own metro picker; the 10-year employment outlook (US BLS + TX TWC side by side); Postings by experience level & metro; and the Wage Trajectory + Real Wage Trajectory (CPI-U adjusted) charts with their own metro picker.

Picking a metro on the Wage Trajectory dropdown bubbles that metro to the top of the Where this career concentrates table (sorted by Location Quotient, the ratio-of-ratios metric that's robust to sampling bias), auto-expands its entry in Top employers per metro, and re-fetches Postings over time scoped to that metro. If the metro has no posting history for that career, the chart falls back to TX-wide and clearly labels the change.

What feeds it

Wage trajectories come from BLS Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS), pulled state-by-state and metro-by-metro across multiple years. Real-wage adjustment uses BLS CPI-U US City Average. The 10-year outlook combines BLS Employment Projections (2024–2034 cycle) for the U.S. picture with the Texas Workforce Commission Long-Term Occupational Projections (2022–2032) via Projections Central for the Texas picture. Posting-level data is aggregated from public free-tier sources: USAJobs (federal), public job boards that allow archive use, employer ATS feeds (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby), and TWC feeds.

What it does

You enter three things: the institution, the degree program, and how you plan to pay for it (cash, federal loans, parent contribution, scholarships, custom rent if you're commuting). The calculator then projects total cost (tuition + room and board + opportunity cost), expected starting salary and ten-year earnings trajectory based on the typical career destination for that degree, and net cumulative cash position year by year. The result is a single chart showing exactly when (or if) the investment pays back — plus a breakeven year, total ten-year cumulative earnings, and a cost breakdown.

v0.8.16 added out-of-state tuition handling, a simplified Living Expenses block, custom-rent override, realistic Auto-living costs with per-mode rent, and dorm-meal plan subtraction so on-campus residents aren't double-counted.

What feeds it

Tuition and aid: IPEDS published rates (most recent available year). Earnings: BLS OEWS wages for the careers typical of that degree program. Loan repayment: standard 10-year federal repayment schedule at current published interest rates. Inflation adjustment: BLS CPI-U. Per-metro cost-of-living: BEA Regional Price Parities. All assumptions are listed at the bottom of every report so you can see exactly what was used.

What it is not

This is a projection under standard assumptions, not a guarantee or a personalized financial plan. Your actual costs (out-of-state tuition, scholarships, private loans, dropping out, transferring) and your actual earnings (employer, region, performance, recession) will differ. Use the result as a magnitude check: is this a reasonable financial bet, a great one, or one that needs careful thought?

What it does

Browse non-degree pathways the same way you'd browse degrees: filter by destination career, by cost, by completion time, by credential type. For each pathway, you get the same ten-year financial treatment used for four-year degrees so you can compare them apples-to-apples on the Compare page.

What feeds it

Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) for state-licensed trades. The federal Apprenticeship.gov registry (currently scaffolded; full ingest pending an API key). Public certificate-program catalogs from accredited training providers. Where a pathway leads to a career with BLS earnings data, the same earnings model used elsewhere on Samantar applies.

What it is not

The non-degree dataset is younger and less complete than the four-year degree dataset. Some pathways are listed without financial numbers because earnings or cost data isn't yet available. Treat ranked lists on this page as a draft, not a definitive answer.