<p>Since I think that prospective parents/students would be interested, wondering if parents with seniors or kids out of BS and into college would post college acceptances/matriculation here going forward.</p>
<p>The point is not to show any particular BS as having a particularly strong or weak track record, but rather to simply see where kids end up (above and beyond the lists the schools publish...which are generally aggregated over a few years). I, for one, was psyched to see a parent recently post about a BS child's admission to film school EA. Derogatory comments about colleges or BS not welcome.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me if you'd rather make the post more anonymous than it would be if you posed under your own screen name.</p>
<p>Many BS college advisors recommend schools that are often not thought of as “elite”, but match the student’s interests. This is an attempt to expand the student’s target schools beyond the usual suspects. Due to a lack of communication parents & students often are unhappy as one of the primary reasons for sending kids to BS is to get into elite colleges & universities.</p>
<p>@Axel, I thought there was a pretty standard formula for most BS college lists. 3 - 4 reaches, 3 - 4 matches and 3 safeties. I am thinking that while the college counselor and the student/parents might differ in their choices, there seems to be plenty of room for both sides to have input on the final list. </p>
<p>I would be leery of a counselor continually pushing a school that my child had not expressed interest in. Doesn’t mean that I would not explore the suggestion online; but unless it clearly looked liked something we had missed, I would not encourage my child to add it just because the counselor said so. </p>
<p>I think the real problems arise when a family produces a totally unrealistic list of schools. That presents a real issue for college counseling departments, and I assume requires a lot of diplomacy. Of course, that is the beauty of Naviance which I think is a college counselors best friend so to speak. Taking your first glance at Naviance is certainly a sobering experience.</p>
<p>Not clear to me what your question is. Naviance plots the GPA and SAT scores of all the applicants from your child’s high school, that have applied to a specified college or university. The dots on the graph are color coded for accepted, rejected or waitlisted. So, while you still have to factor in other aspects that affect college decisions (i.e. athletics, URM status) you can a get a general idea of your overall chances at that particular school.</p>
<p>Axelrod - I’m curious as to what your connection is to boarding schools? Current applicant, current parent, current student? Your post #2 above doesn’t ring true with my experience or the experience of other BS families I know. Also, you have a huge number of posts for just one month. Just want to put some context around your opinions.</p>
<p>What do you all feel about Naviance? Are college admissions really so narrowly focused that they worry about how many kids they have accepted from a given school? Do they really favor spreading the admissions wealth over selecting the best applicants to create well rounded classes? The Naviance scattergrams seem statistically useless to me. I could be wrong…</p>
<p>I feel Naviance is a useful tool, but it has limitations. I think it’s more useful for larger schools. If too few students apply to a college, you can’t see the chart, to protect student privacy. As others have noted, it doesn’t show “hooks,” which can have a huge effect on admissions.</p>
<p>Don’t get to hung up on the scattergrams. My daughter and I put together a large chart which is hanging in my office and helps me keep her decision making straight. I noted on each school what the admission rate was over the last year or so. And then I realized, for instance, it’s relative. She’s applying to schools that - unlike MIT - ask you to apply to specific programs. So you can’t look at a scattergram and assume it applies to a specific child. She’s looking for a specialized program of study and is only one of two students in her graduating class (that I know of) applying for that field. Other students are applying to the same colleges but for different programs. Each program has its own admission standard and committee. So I wish it was broken down to “school of…” so we can further refine our interpretation of the charts.</p>
<p>For example, if a lot of students applied to the School of Engineering at Cornell, but one to Architecture and yet another to Hotel Management (and so on and so on) the data becomes meaningless without the context. You also don’t know that if 20 applied, 4 accepted, 2 enrolled - what region of the country or world the students came from, which were jocks, etc. Suppose that of the 20 - all but 2 were a single ethnicity or gender? </p>
<p>My personal experience over several decades is that sometimes a lot of students are so focused on what they think will look good on their college resume - they forget to just have fun and be passionate. In the end, they’ve done all the right activities, but don’t have anything to distinguish themselves among the thousands of other students who did the exact same activities. And then don’t get admitted because they’re “one of a crowded field.” But that odd duck student - who had an additional passion that resonated with the committee, – stood out and did get in. Which is why I say - ignore the scatter plot and make sure there are stretches, reaches, and safeties on the list. Then tell the student - do what they’re passionate about, not what they “think” an admissions committee is looking for. That (beyond legacies and jocks) is probably the “why” of the student who was accepted.</p>
<p>As far as Naviance is concerned, I tend to focus on the clusters of acceptances. If you have a few acceptances that fall way-out of range, I conclude they are special circumstances. For the purpose of determining whether a specific school is a reach, match or safety, I find those clusters of acceptances, and where they fall on the graph in relation to my own child’s plot point, to be quite helpful.</p>
<p>If your child has a special talent, is legacy or there are some other special circumstances, then perhaps the tool may not be as helpful.</p>
<p>So, not being in the Naviance loop, I have a question: does it do anything besides provide raw data? I mean, is there more to it, or is Naviance THE way folks determine how and where they’ll apply? It seems a bit narrow way of looking at it (from where I sit, as a parent of a BS freshman). I am curious to know how useful a tool it is, for future reference.</p>
<p>It’s just one tool. Certainly I would think school visits would be one of the most important factors in determining where your child might want to apply.</p>
<p>I also just realized that this thread has veered totally off topic from the original question posed.</p>
<p>Naviance is a snapshot of the schools your child and/or counselor are considering and allows you to add schools you think should be considered. There is also a place for you to upload information for the counselor and keep track of their test scores. For instance, Taft sent out a survey for parents asking additional information and insight - from the parent perspective - we wanted them to know when crafting the letter to the colleges. My husband uploaded our answers on to Naviance so they wouldn’t get lost in an email inbox. It’s kind of a general gathering place for information and links to the college information. We could also add her resume of EC’s she’d done while overseas and 9th grade locally which the counselor may or may not be aware of. The colleges don’t see Naviance - on the family, child and counselor.</p>
<p>I spent a lot of time playing on the Common App which is a bit scarier in that it can’t be changed for subsequent colleges once submitted. So it has additional charts, graphs, etc. but I was careful not to hit anything even remotely like “send” or “done” since when you’re in that account you’re in the actual student’s Application file that will be submitted. Still, I was able to remind her of EC’s and awards she had forgotten to note on her application…You know the "Oh mom, everyone gets that “National ( thing most kids really don’t get) Award so I left it off,” conversation? :)</p>
<p>You generally have coherent observations, but you have gotten your facts wrong on the Common App when you observe,
.</p>
<p>The Common App allows up to ten separate versions, with ten separate personal essays, with different teacher recs permitted to go to different separate colleges (if you wish to be that granular). So, YES, YES, YES, the Common App CAN BE CHANGED for subsequent colleges once submitted. You are only locked out of changing the Common App for those particular colleges to which you submitted it already. If you have a new set of colleges, you can either add them to the existing (submitted) Common App or create a totally new Common App and add them at that point.</p>
<p>Over the least three years I have loved checking in on this forum when I can for what little camaraderie I can get. I am one of those who feels very isolated in my home community since my kids went off to prep schools and this forum is as helpful as cyberspace can be. It can’t, however, mitigate the pressure I have felt to report locally on my children’s successes in the face of those local competitors who seek to justify their decision to leave their kids in public schools with class sizes of 40-60+. That said, there is much angst in the forum too, and I have been prone to bouts of fear and hopelessness about college prospects after reading things here. </p>
<p>So today I can report that we are feeling that ** was worth the unbelievable financial and familial strain for two reasons. The first has always been true: an education that will serve them the rest of their lives and make the college transition so much easier. The second is new and related: my DD has been accepted - with merit - to a top LAC ED. Not only do we not feel that would have happened had she stayed home, but even if it had, we would not have the confidence about her ability to transition that we do. In short, she might have gone to this LAC and been a bottom dweller. </p>
<p>I am not comfortable giving names and/or stats, but I will say that today, for our whole family, this ** journey has been much more than worth it - it has been profound. </p>
<p>This may not be true for everyone and I know this whole process can be agony – and we still have another in the pipeline. But our experience is that it is NOT true that you won’t do as well in the college process if you go to **, and I wanted to balance out the naysayers.</p>