Years ago our babysitter was raving about Naviance in helping her find where to apply for college.
My oldest is now a junior and we moved to another state and our high school doesn’t offer this. I have asked s22 GC if they have something like this or anything to help him.
Only 56% of students attend 4 year colleges and the school shows no interest in helping anyone achieve more than the relatively low ranked state schools (MT).
My son is 2nd in his class of over 500, 3 sport athlete (2 varsity). Takes all the APs they offer and has 4.0uw, 4.6w. Taking the SAT this coming weekend and just got a 1510 on practice test 9. Also wondering if being from low pop state affects chances.
When I ask how other students have found the right school when they are at the top of the class and looking to go somewhere other than in state, GC said she didn’t know and I should research that.
I am so stressed that he has nothing to direct him.
Bottom line is, what would you use to discover possibilities if you didn’t have naviance? What is a good alternative?
Try https://www.collegedata.com Only thing we even bothered with on Naviance was looking at scattergrams.
You could also look at the IECA website and see if there are any college consultants in your area. If that is the option, a professional may be worth the cost especially with list development amd have a good understanding of your child’s high school too.
My son’s school uses Naviance, which was helpful in keeping him on track with things like writing out all of his awards and extracurricular activities, gauging likelihood of getting into a university based on past students from his school and what their stats were. It also has information on each school, like GPA range, test score ranges, etc.
However, you can also use niche.com for some of these features. It is free to sign up and you can add in your son’s stats and see how they compare with past applicants. You can also use it to compare schools.
You can also use the US news and world reports Compass website. They also have resources to help your child stay on track with applications. It also lets you compare different schools.
Here in NY, many people hire a college consultant to help guide you on what colleges would be a good fit.
I find that even with the level of college focus for my son’s high school, the GCs can be lacking and not really have a good grasp on what are good fit schools. My son’s GC was fine with him adding a lot of teach schools to his list without enough just right and safeties. I had to go through it all and come up with a more realistic list based on a combination of naviance, niche and compass.
Being from a low population state helps his chances with elite schools. They aim for geographical diversity and probably don’t get that many apps from Montana.
Based on his practice exams, it sounds as though your son is going to bring home a top SAT score. Students with 1500+ SAT scores from under represented areas do not go unnoticed by top schools. He is registered with the College Board now and he should check off any boxes that invite direct solicitation from schools. He will hear from many different schools all across the country. Then, come back to CC and ask lots of questions.
Also, I hear that raiseme dot com is a good resource to earn scholarships and find partner schools that will honor those scholarships.
Our GC isn’t much help either. We are at a Title I school so I feel their time is spent more on getting kids to graduation. Son is number 2 in his class of about 350. We just started by researching schools with his intended major, reading up, asking questions on social media sites and college visits. Luckily, we did a college road trip/family vaca the summer before junior year (2019) and hit all the schools he was interested in. He was able to eliminate some and fell in love with others. I would start doing your own research online. I know it’s tough right now to visit in person but definitely sign up for the virtual sessions to learn more. I feel like it was a full time job and am glad it’s almost over!
There is so much info out there. Talk with your kid. Ask him where he might feel comfortable. Big or Small. Geographically. Do virtual tours and info sessions. If you can travel, and the schools are open, go visit a number of schools. Keep one thing in mind, all of the “elite schools” are extremely difficult to get into and it can be an arduous journey. He’ll find his path.
Also look at College Board’s “Big Future” college search website, the Government’s College Navigator (College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics), College Data, Peterson, and CC’s very own college search capabilities.
After that, come back here and ask any question you want. You may get contradicting answers, but that is actually because you will get different points of view, and because it will often be based on personal experiences and perceptions. It is also somewhat less tilted, since you lack the bias inherent in the summaries of student complaints/praise that you will get in sites like Niche or Unigo.
I found the book The College Solution very helpful when we first started looking at colleges and I had no idea what I was doing.
Thank you! There are so many sites out there and I don’t know which ones are any good/accurate.
Many swear by the Fiske Guide to College. The 2021 Edition is $20 on Amazon.
OP- do one quick exercise. Look up the net price calculator for your in-state flagship university. Then do a “back of the envelope” calculation of what you can afford.
If you can afford to send your son to the instate option- congratulations. You are miles ahead of the game. That’s your kids safety school- you know what it is, you know you can afford it.
Now comes the more complicated exercise, but there are books (Fiske etc., not the holy bible but a valuable resource if you use it correctly) websites (like this one), magazines (the beloved/hated US News rankings) etc. which can help you.
Once your son has taken the SAT’s you are about to be bombarded with college mail. He’s a high scorer in a rare zip code, that’s gold to colleges looking to diversify geographically. You’ll hear from colleges which are obscure, colleges which are famous, colleges which don’t offer anything your son is looking for- but at this stage of the game it’s all good.
You can do this without naviance and we can help you…
If your school doesn’t send many students to different schools, Naviance likely wouldn’t be much help
(try the library for college guides)
There is indeed a lot to think about. However, your son has excellent stats, you have time, and there are lots of people here who have experience going through this with their children.
My understanding is that this means that you are in Montana. Montana is a WICHE / WUE state.
My knowledge of WICHE is limited to one person who moved to a WICHE state after graduation, established residency and turned 25 (therefore is independent of parents), and applied to specialized graduate programs (this went really well). WUE is the undergraduate part of WICHE, and therefore not something that I have looked at. My understanding is that some WUE schools are only WUE schools for specific majors.
However, if your budget matters to you, and if you are indeed from Montana (or any Wiche state), then I think that you should look at the WUE schools and see if any of them are a good fit for your son.
Universities do not expect you to fix your high school. The top schools want you to excel at whatever high school you are at. It sounds to me that your son has done exactly that. This should help him a lot in university admissions.
Naviance can be used to give you a sense of what GPA was accepted or not accepted at certain universities. However, 4.0 unweighted plus “all the APs they offer” is all that your son could possibly do. I do not think that you actually need Naviance.
Figure out your budget. There is a huge range in prices, and the top of the range is very high ($80,000 per year). You can google “net price calculator name-of-school” and get an estimate of what any one school might cost you.
You should at some point try to figure out what your son wants in a university. Visiting a few schools can be very helpful, but is something that might need to wait until the pandemic is over or you are vaccinated.
You can google “name-of-school gpa sat” and get some sense what the average GPA and SAT are for students at any particular university. Knowing that Washington State is a WUE school, I just tried this for them and found that prepscholar says that WSU has a 3.46 average GPA plus 75% admissions rate. Admissions looks pretty likely to me for a WUE student with an unweighted 4.0. You could try this for any other schools that you are considering.
Given your son’s sports ability, one obvious question is whether he has a chance to be recruited for sports. He might want to ask his coaches if any of them know what is involved here. Keep in mind that university sports is a huge commitment of time and effort.
Given your son’s excellent academic stats, he might want to think about whether or not he wants to consider the really top ranked universities. If you have nothing but A’s all through high school and 1500+ on the SAT, this makes you competitive for MIT or Harvard. However, “competitive” is still a reach, and if you have nothing but A’s and 1500 on the SAT and attend MIT or Harvard then you are suddenly average the day that you arrived on campus, you are surrounded by very competitive students, and the classes are tough. Each student needs to decide for themself whether they want to do this.
If you actually are from Montana, then there are very good universities just to the north of you (eg, Calgary, Lethbridge, UBC) which are very good and where admissions is very stats oriented. Again this is something that you could either ignore or check out.
I second Fiske- a really well written book on some of the top schools.
I found the USNews Compass subscription to be worth the small cost, with several other sites assisting.
My older D’s GC seemed to think the choice for top students came down to Pitt or Penn State, with other students choosing among 4-6 local regional schools. Families of top students who wanted to look elsewhere were on our own.
A group of us got together occasionally to share information. Perhaps that’s why three ended up at Purdue, with all three having Virginia Tech in their top three, and one at MIT. Maybe seek out the few others in the same position.
Check out the website or book Public honors, as well as the Website Colleges that change lives (often referred on college confidential as CTCL schools). Browse, dont worry too much for now about it, you’ll order info later. For now, just get an idea of what’s out there.
Fiske is good to have (any 2018+ copy is okay) but a first step could be The college solution and/or Princeton Review. They’re less in-depth than Fiske so could help you clear out the basics before you get into the weeds. 
For contrast, visit UMontana (in Missoula?) and Caroll College (in Helene, I think).
Run Fafsa4caster to have an idea of your EFC.
Then run the NPC on both UMT and Caroll, then add Williams, Whitman, UOregon, WWU, and CPP through Wue, to get an idea of possible prices.
Note estimated family contribution is a misnommer, its the minimum your family will be expected to pay.
Use this website, ask a lot of questions. Lots of people will gladly (or grumpily…) answer.
It is OK to be lost. My son was standing in my bedroom at 11:00 pm on the day apps where due discussing if he should apply to a school. He is now in his first year at that school.
Start with finances. How much can you afford? I would run a few Net Price Calculators at different schools to see if the cost that they would expect you to pay is actually doable for you. That will help to decide if you need to chase merit or not.