I have revisited Naviance with your insight in mind. I see what you guys mean about the size of the applicate pool to each college making a big difference. His school is large but it seems a lot of kids apply to the same colleges. I wondered if perhaps the most “qualified” 50 kids are getting into the same top schools RD and changing the results. There is no way to tell who they are or what EC’s they have just looking at the scattergraph. My southern school list doesn’t have nearly as many data points as say Harvey Mudd, MIT, or Columbia. My first go around I hadn’t looked at those schools as they aren’t of interest.
It also seems problematic to use an ACT score as it appears most kids take the SAT at his school. (at least that is what the scattergram shows). The 2018 admissions data needs to be updated by counselors. Right now only the 2016 and 2017 data is shown.
I don’t know what percentile he falls within this class. This kind of stuff hasn’t been on my radar. I didn’t know his GPA weighted or unweight until I decided to post here for some help. (I am still unclear about how they are calculated mid year before a class is finished) For better or worst he does attend a huge magnet as referenced above. There are a lot of great kids that do amazing things and I think that is truly WONDERFUL for them and their families. My boy just isn’t that kind of kid. He skateboards, bikes, walks the neighbor’s dogs, and plays call of duty with his free time. He studies very hard for his classes and he writes his newspaper stories. He is a pleasure to be around and I think he is receiving a first rate education. His ACT score and this summer trip planning have caused me to get my head out of the sand about the college process.
I looked at the Common Data Set as suggested. I think this info will be helpful. It will require some old school work on my part but I’m cool with doing a little digging. I would suggest others take a look as well.
I think there are too many variables that factor into where my son truly falls on the scattergram for Naviance to be much use. I am glad most of you see it as a limited resource as well. Thank you again for your willingness to hold my hand a bit as I begin my education on higher education.
I will have son circle around to his counselors to see if there is any hidden information because of small sample size. I am not sure what they will release but it is worth a try.
Your understanding of what the grandparent is going to “help with” and the grandparent’s understanding may be very different. Back in the day, 5K per year (nothing to sneeze at by the way) was the difference between a state college and a top price private U. Now? Not so much.
Get a handle on three numbers:
1- what the Net Price Calculators at a bunch of different schools say you’ll need to pay.
2- What you can ACTUALLY afford, based on savings, current income, ability to borrow if you need to/want to. (Plus your son’s federal loans).
3- How much grandparents are prepared to commit to for four years (or one year, or after the fact, or whatever).
The crowd here can come up with DOZENS of colleges which meet your son’s criteria but it don’t mean much if you need to sell a kidney to make it happen. So start there.
Deviance data helps you to gauge your stat, but it does not have non parametric information. in addition, it is data from the past which may be changed in current year. It may be more accurate than just looking at the overall admission stat of a college though.
Naviance scattergrams will tell you a lot about the admission policies at each college. If you get an error saying that it will not display data to protect privacy, you can lower the GPA and/or ACT to include more data points.
Data driven schools will show a very strong correlation, easily interpolated linear regression line in the upper quadrant. You will see only a few scattered admissions below that line. That encompasses most of the state flagships and some of the top 20 privates like Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Caltech, etc. Colleges that are more ‘holistic’ in their policies (e.g Ivy League) will seem almost randomized in the upper quadrant. Clearly GPA and ACT are not the primary admission factors for the better students.
Another useful indicator is admission percentages for EA and RD. At my son’s HS, for example, EA admissions to Michigan were in the 90%+ range but closer to 60% in RD. At Stanford they were a lot lower, but virtually the same in EA and RD. That figure will help you decide where to use your SCEA/ED choice, all other things being equal.
Obviously the finances will come first, and to a middle class parent sending their first child to college, the prices can seem quite outrageous in comparison to even a few years ago.
One word of caution relying on grandparents to help out - have a frank discussion with them on what would happen should one or both of the GPs become ill, incapacitated or die while the student is in college. (We’ve had family members who experienced this) They may be relying on non-transferable sources like pensions or social security, and may need money for their own medical care if they experience a fall, stroke, Alzheimer’s, etc. You are making a 4 year commitment to your child and you should make contingency plans should the funding source disappear.
Our school has a large URM population and some pretty good teams as well. It’s a large school so they rarely had to block applicants, but there were some numbers that were pretty screwy. I asked about Stanford, which had relatively few acceptances but those who were accepted were the bottom not the top students of the pool. It turned out the only two kids they had ever accepted played helmet sports and were also URM. My son applied any way and joined the numbers of the many, many rejected. Meanwhile the East Coast top schools were happy to take our kids. Any way for safeties I found Naviance reliable for both kids. My younger son had higher SAT scores than grades, and his M and R scores were 100 points apart. There was often not a lot of data for his profile - but he got into a number of schools which the data suggested were iffy. His SAT score was often higher than average for the school, and grades were lower. There turned out to be a sweet spot for him - any school with a 20% or higher acceptance rate took him. If it was lower than that they didn’t. (One school only had that acceptance rate for EA, but that’s how he applied.)
Our school put in several years of data and doesn’t show scattergrams (but does show averages) for schools were few students have applied.
mathmom’s description is very similar to not just Naviance results from my son’s school, but the level of analysis one has to apply to the detail.
There were several top tier colleges that appeared on Naviance to accept relatively large (meaning >25%) number of applicants. If the only data you had was the Naviance scattergram, you might understandably assume you had a good chance if you had equal to or better stats. But… although there aren’t any helmet sports at this school we have some of the top crew (rowing) and sailing programs and most of those admits were recruited athletes.
It would be nice if Naviance had an indicator for some of the hooks, like URM or recruited athlete. That data wouldn’t be needed or helpful for analyzing large metric based college acceptances, but it would be invaluable for assessing chances at the top 30 or so selectives.
Naviance only “knows” the statistics your school puts in, which means it’s typically relying on kids to let guidance know when they get accepted (not usually a problem) or rejected (perhaps a shade less reliable.)
If your college placement staff is on top of things, it can be a great resource. But if they’re overwhelmed with other guidance issues, or if kids are less than honest with the info they provide, I can see how some of Naviance’s info might not be exactly on target.
In addition, if you’re applying to a school that kids from your high school don’t usually apply to, they won’t be able to give you as much info.
Naviance only “knows” the statistics your school puts in, which means it’s typically relying on kids to let guidance know when they get accepted (not usually a problem) or rejected (perhaps a shade less reliable.)
If your college placement staff is on top of things, it can be a great resource. But if they’re overwhelmed with other guidance issues, or if kids are less than honest with the info they provide, I can see how some of Naviance’s info might not be exactly on target.
In addition, if you’re applying to a school that kids from your high school don’t usually apply to, they won’t be able to give you as much info.
Naviance also does not show what major each student applies for. Kids in our school with 4.96 & 35 ACTs have been deferred from schools that other kids with 3.2 & 24 ACT have been admitted to.
