<p>I am wondering if any current college students used Naviance in their selection process. If so, did you get accepted to a "reach" school even though your chances were less than other grads from your school? why do you think you were accepted?</p>
<p>this is an absurd question. naviance is merely a tool to help organize the college process and make it easier. it in no way “boosts” your application.</p>
<p>i don’t think the OP was trying to say that naviance helps boost your chances. I believe what the OP tried to say was perhaps Naviance makes it seem a little more difficult to get into some schools.</p>
<p>My sons and their classmates have had experiences on both sides of this issue. Some got into schools that the Naviance scattergrams implied were reaches for them, but some got rejected from schools where their data put them over on the “accepted” side of the scattergram.</p>
<p>The main reason for these seeming anomalies is that Naviance only reflects standardized test scores and GPAs. It doesn’t take into account all the other things that admissions officers look at – honors/awards, ECs, leadership roles, personal experiences (as reflected in essays, for example), etc. So one student may be chosen over another student who has higher grades or test scores because he is a medal-winning cellist or a star athlete or is a double legacy at that particular school or has an incredible art portfolio. There’s no way to quantify those qualifications on Naviance.</p>
<p>Also remember that the Naviance scattergrams are based on historical data from a relatively small sample of candidates (your own school). So they may not accurately reflect current admissions standards. Just look at some of the top 50 schools and see how much their average SAT/ACT scores have risen over the past few years, or how the overall number of applications has increased (thereby driving down admission rates). I think that’s why some students who expected to be admitted, based on past history, were surprised when they didn’t get in or were waitlisted.</p>
<p>I think Naviance provides some useful information and can help you build a good list of safety/match/reach schools, but it is not a particularly accurate predictor of actual college admissions in individual cases.</p>
<p>nbg this is an interesting thread you have started!</p>
<p>I graduated '08 and did use naviance extensively. Here is
what I gleaned from my public HS’s acceptances etc for this
year and the past two: (though this may not answer your
question)</p>
<p>1) NAVIANCE IS CONSISTENT:
Students almost always get accepted into their match schools
i.e where their GPA and SAT puts them on the top right corner
of the naviance graph with the rectangle to the left or beneath
their data point. The only exception is when the recc giver
comes across not in favor of the applicant (happened to 1 student).</p>
<p>2) SAT SCORE EXCEPTIONS:
Students with a lower height of data point were the only ones accepted
over students with a higher height data point (i.e GPA) when
exceptions occurred. This usually corresponded to a stratospheric SAT
Score placing the exceptions on the extreme right (perfect/near-
perfect) SAT scores. In other words SAT >> GPA (for importance)</p>
<p>3) ATHLETES EXCEPTION:
Athletes were the other major exception group where despite lower
GPA and SAT they would get accepted to schools over peers who
had much higher GPAs AND SATs- this was however true only at
colleges ranked (USNWR) below the top 20.</p>
<p>4) GPA WEIGHTED MATTERS:
Prior year Naviance graphs were almost >90% accurate based on GPA
in predicting which border line applicants may be accepted and
100% accurate in determining who would get rejected. The SAT score
averages were a bit
misleading since a few perfect/near-perfect scorers skewed this data. Sicne
admissions officers have the same historic knowledge of your school’s applicants
as naviance and not much of the other data when arriving at first impressions
you can get a pretty good idea of where you stand with this data (despite
the all improtant ECs, SATIIs and APs at the top schools)</p>
<p>5) WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THAT:
WUSTL is the one school where the lower data points get routinely
admitted from my school and the ones at the right hand top of the
rectangle are waitlisted and then rejected(almost every year these
students end up in being accepted in 2/3 of the top 5 schools).</p>
<p>(I applied to six schools and was admitted to all of them HPSCD and MIT.
Without Naviance I would have never had the data to limit my application
process so heavily)</p>
<p>what the hell is naviance?</p>
<p>its a tool</p>
<p>It’s a program that has creates graphs, charts, etc. of the acceptance histories of students at your school (so you can determine your chance of acceptance)…</p>
<p>My daughter viewed it, but it didn’t impact any of her decisions. I found it interesting to browse through and learned about acceptance rates.</p>
<p>Here are some sites that do not require passwords. You can enter the
school’s Naviance site as a guest and view scattergrams or in
some cases the acceptance history as well. </p>
<p>[https://connection.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=centralcatholic[/url</a>]
no password required</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=hcrhs]HCR”>http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=hcrhs]HCR</a> HS](<a href=“https://connection.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=centralcatholic]https://connection.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=centralcatholic[/url”>https://connection.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=centralcatholic) no password required</p>
<p>[CIBA</a>](<a href=“http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=ciba]CIBA”>http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=ciba)no password required</p>
<p>[Episcopal</a>](<a href=“http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=episcopal]Episcopal”>http://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=episcopal) no password required</p>
<p>Naviance Thread Link <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/245650-naviance-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/245650-naviance-4.html</a></p>
<p>post 55 on page 4 has lots of High Schools listed with passwords</p>
<p>How helpful is looking at another school’s Naviance history? I think the pertinent information would be how your high school has done at each university.<br>
The scattergrams are helpful in developing a good mix of schools to apply to - making sure you have a safety, matches and a few reaches in the mix.</p>
<p>Did not use it. Mainly did not really know what it was, never figured out how to access until well after it mattered.</p>
<p>Our school uses something similar to Naviance, but with more information such as sex, ed, special circumstances. I asked the counselor about the accuracy of information on a predictive basis. For the individual situations it is not predictive but on an overall basis, it does work very well. The same curves seem to show up each year. There are exception but that is why a reach is a reach and not an impossibility, and why a safety is a safety but not a certainty. Last year was not a good one in term of the slight reach/high match category and there was a discrepancy there. But nearly everyone got into chosen safeties and the number of kids who got into their reaches was also stable.</p>
<p>This is pretty cool, i wish my school used it</p>
<p>My friend’s daughter’s school uses Naviance. It does have a lot of limitations in their case because the school is very small and there are only a few colleges that have enough applicants to come up with any conclusion at all. How can you make judgement when you only have a handful of candidates for each school.</p>
<p>Lol… if my school had that… There would be little data to correlate.</p>
<p>I think Naviance is fairly accurate. Still you have to take the data with a grain of salt when factors like legacy, URM and athletics are so important these days. With competitive colleges, even if you are in a area outside the “average box” or green cluster, you are not a shoe-in. I’ve found with a lot of state schools or liberal arts that arn’t the Big Names Naviance is a good prediction based on GPA+SAT.</p>
<p>I was rejected and waitlisted to all schools considered either a semi-reach or reach for me. Accepted to all where I was in a green cluster of acceptances.</p>
<p>Last year I logged into random naviances just to laugh at prep kids.</p>
<p>I much prefer this:</p>
<p>[CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/]CollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com/)</p>