Using Course Finder

Located under Search in the menu, Course Finder is the most popular and most used feature in TES. Course Finder is the foundation and starting point for the other features. You can search for course descriptions, course details, and full catalogs from any institution included in TES. You can access institution profiles, do a specialized search to identify courses offered by institutions accredited by a particular agency and locate institutions by geography/country.

Although it is not imperative to know the structure of TES to use it effectively, you may be interested to know that TES is organized first by Institution, then by data set (catalog year), then by department, and then by course. The first step to finding any course description in TES, therefore, is to first locate the institution. You can use the various features available at the first step of the Course Finder to locate the institution you are looking for. You can locate it directly, using the basic Course Finder feature, or by narrowing down your selections using the Optional Search features described further down in this discussion thread.

How to look up a course tutorial:

Institution Search capability:

U.S. Schools
Non U.S. Schools
Non-School data sources
Identifier IDs/Institution Codes
Course Finder/Optional Searches
- Geographic
- Country (International)
- Course title, accreditation and state

Find an Institution

U.S. Schools

Type the full or partial name, city, state, or abbreviation of the school. (i.e. San Diego State, San, California, or SDSU.)

A list of institutions will be generated. If there are too may results, scroll or search again to narrow the results. The list contains Institution Name, City, Datasets (DS), and PDF. A checkmark for Datasets indicates you can search for individual course descriptions for that school, and a checkmark for PDF indicates the full catalog is also available.

Non U.S. Schools

Select the Non U.S. Schools radio button above the search box. Type the full or partial name, city, country, or an abbreviation of the school. (i.e. Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, or UM.)

Non-School data sources

In addition to data from traditional institutions, TES includes AP courses, CLEP exams, ACE military courses and occupations, International Baccalaureate (IB), Cambridge Assessment International Education content, Workforce Training Exams and Courses such as Straighterline, UExcel, Saylor, YearUp, and more (found in the ACE Guide).

Lookup tips:

Select All Schools radio button above search box.

AP/CLEP > CollegeBoard
ACE Military Credit Guide/Workforce Training Exams and Courses > ACE
DSST (Formerly Dantes) Program Exams > Dantes
International Baccalaureate (IB) > IB
Cambridge Assessment International Education (formerly Cambridge International Examinations) > Cambridge

Identifier IDs/Institution Codes

You can search by the following Identifier ID/Institution Codes: IPEDS ID, CEEB Code, ACE Code, ACT Code, FICE Code, and OPE ID.

Please note: Code sets may contain duplicates. For example, 4682 is both the CEEB Code for San Diego State University and the ACT Code for the University of Wisconsin-Superior. There may also be duplicates within a code type, as institutions close, consolidate, or codes are reused/recycled and given to another school by The College Board.