I am a freshman in High School and my GPA is pretty low (I have a 4.2 GPA on a 5.0 scale for on level classes and a 6.0 for AP classes). My unweighted is like a 3.4 or 3.5. However Naviance shows that I have a good chance in getting into Cornell and UCLA. I find those colleges to be “reaches” for me since they seem to only accept amazing students. How reliable is Naviance?
Also does it factor in race? I am an African American so that might be the reason.
Are you looking at the naviance data specific to students who’ve applied to college from your high school?
I always view automatic “chancing” websites, even a one as great as Naviance, with skepticism because they only see the stats and have a limited data pool to pull from. An admissions officer when they look at your application will look at it hollistically, essays, extracurriculars, and all. You are right that your UW GPA is kind of low, which is what colleges do tend to look at, but Naviance could be taking into account your weighted GPA which suggests that you have taken many rigorous courses. Apply to a wide range of reach, match, and safety schools, but don’t let one website dictate over common sense. If anything you could talk to your guidance counselor to see what they have to say. Or you can look at past applicants in their results threads here on CC
Yes
It accurately tells you what has happened in the past.
It doesn’t pretend to predict the future.
It doesn’t tell you the “hooks” of previous applicants/admits like recruited athletes, legacy, development, etc.
The Naviance product my kids had access to only showed results for the prior year’s class from their school. So it was accurate in that the GPA was all from their school, so reflected how admissions people viewed grades from their school particularly, But innacurate in not reflecting the precise courses that generated that GPA (their school didn’t compute weighted GPA), the real “picture” of each applicant behind the GPA and test scores, differences in selectivity this year vs last year . And also inaccurate because that data, from that one school, constituted such a small sample.
In the case of Cornell, and other multi-college universitites, Naviance didn’t distinguish between which college there the applicants applied to. Since the university’s various colleges have differing admissions criteria and standards, there can be material differences in admissions difficulty for a particular candidate depending on which college there he/she applied to. A fact which Naviance fails to capture, due to its failture to distinguish between the individual colleges.
Just like the typical disclaimer for investments:
*Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results… *