I guess the school naviance provides the chances for the colleges admission based on the GPA, SAT and course rigor. It is interesting to observe that naviance is projecting University of Pennsylvania as a safety school while UCB and UCLA as match school. I was surprised a bit and getting doubt that whether these data on naviance are correct?
Anything that predicts Penn as a safety school for anyone is a worthless system. Or you are interpreting the information incorrectly.
What you said is correct. System might not be working properly. But, what I’m interpreting the information is correct though. Here is what Naviance is saying:
“How you compare with others who have applied to University of Pennsylvania
This institution is a Safety: Your academic qualifications (GPA & test scores) are above the academic profile of students nationally who are typically enrolled at this institution.”
That aspect of Naviance is pathetic. Instead, take a look at the scattergram under the admissions tab.
Look up what the acceptance % is for UPenn. That’s about what your chances are for acceptance if you are in upper echelons of candidates
Take what you read with a grain of salt. Look at the scatter gram. Use this tool just as a guide not the holy grail. It should just give you a clue if your in the ballpark kinda thing.
Yes, scattergram makes sense. It is consistent with the acceptance rate. I was just surprised when it said “safety” for UPenn. It is sometimes misleading for a person who wants to use naviance as guiding factor while applying to the colleges.
what you should get from that is that if you are a strong candidate from your school, Penn will seriously consider your application. They know your high school provides well prepared students.
A few things that you need to know about Naviance…
How the data is verified and entered differs from school to school. At some, the college counselors verify and enter. At others, students self report on their last day of school. Guess which is more accurate.
There is no way to separate out hooked applicants. But if your school has some strong tie(s) to those (a coach relationship, for example), those hooked students will have an edge and it may not be one you share.
Naviance doesn’t show admissions by school or major, yet many schools admit this way. Getting into film school at NYU is next to impossible. Getting admitted for something else is less so. So the Naviance results have little to do with you if you are applying for film.
So this is all to say that the students who are admitted with lower stats may all be in as different boat than you are. Naviance can’t help with that, but the college counselor at your school can.
It is very true. It is becoming difficult to identify as reach, match and safety schools while applying. I was reading somewhere that safety schools reject applicants with high GPA/SAT score in order to get better yield for the school. Is this understanding true? if so, then there is no point in assuming those schools as safety.
It is generally not true that schools reject high stats kids to improve their reported yield. If it’s a strong, thoughtful application, why would a school miss the chance to enroll that student?
They WILL reject kids, including high stats ones, who submit applications that do not suggest that an applicant has thoroughly researched a school and is genuinely interested in attending. And there are a lot of these. Kids want to major in things the school doesn’t offer, cut and paste essays clearly intended for a different school, etc.
If you post your (or your student’s) stats and profile, CC posters can help you categorize schools on your list. Naviance scattergrams should be helpful, but talk to the GC too.
Regarding safety schools protecting yield, that is not really a thing if it’s a true safety (auto admit based on stats). As gardenstategal said, some schools want to see demonstrated interest (generally these are private schools), and they may choose to not admit high stat students who did not engage with the school at all.
Last thing about safety schools…they also have to be affordable to be considered a safety.
That would be valid for colleges that admit solely by stats, such as most Canadian universities. For selective American colleges that statement is ludicrous.
I thank you all for your valuable input and advises. Also, I will take the help of CG to prepare the list of college applications.
This is actually something the naviance scattergram can be very useful for. For example during D19’s college search, we noticed that one of her schools of interest denied or (more often) waitlisted almost everyone with above a 3.8GPA or above a certain ACT/SAT score (I don’t remember the latter now), but almost everyone between 3.3 and 3.8 was admitted. So this school clearly practices yield protection.
one more thing with Naviance…
You can’t tell who applied ED or their FA situation. In the post above, if FP kids with 3.3-3.8 applied ED and were decent applicants, they might have been accepted over a tippy top kid needing FA who applied RD or even a good FP applicant who looked just like the kids who they had already accepted ED… So what looks like “yield protection” may have been something else. This is the kind of thing your GC should know because they know the back stories that aren’t apparent in the scattergram.
In summary, in addition to exhibit demonstrated interest in Reach schools, it is also necessary to do the same for safety schools to enhance the safeness more meaningful. In most of the cases, the order of acceptance (from the applicant’s perspective) is consistent or random? Of course, definition of these reach,match and safety is specific to the applicant but not for the school. Anyways, applying to wide range of schools that we feel fit and hope for the good.
But the “post above” is actually about a school that is well known for yield protection, is known to be used as a safety against the two “better” schools in its city, and that consequently puts a lot of emphasis on demonstrated interest. You can’t tell that from the scattergram either, but it’s a good hint to investigate further (whether you find the outcome to be yield protection or an ED benefit. This school does have an incredibly high ED admit rate, usually over 80%, but very few people apply ED there, definitely not nearly enough to explain the naviance pattern. The ED advantage is the demonstrated interest, as stated clearly by their AO in the presentation.)