My school’s Naviance’s college scattergrams show that students at my school who have SIGNIFICANTLY above-average GPAs and SATs for a given school get rejected. It’s not even like it’s a rare case or an outlier or anything; I mean that for NYU for instance, it shows that at least half of the students in the 1400s SAT and 4.0-4.4 weighted GPA range get rejected or deferred. What’s even weirder is that it shows some students with as low as both an ~1150 AND ~3.3 GPA getting accepted into the same school. What’s even with this? I’m looking at the 1600 scale; did they have errors converting or something? Am I screwed due to going to a Boston-area high school?
Naviance works best when it has a large number of students at [whatever high school you go to] that have applied to [whatever college you’re looking at]. That being said, you don’t get to see anything “holistic” about the accepted/denied students even when a lot have applied to a given college. Those lower stat kids that were accepted may have been athletic recruits, or (for colleges that look at the whole package) really interesting backgrounds, etc etc. So long story short, Naviance is reliable but you need to take it with a grain of salt.
Since naviance doesn’t give you the students majors, you can assume those high rejects are probably in the most competitive majors and schools and the low acceptances are in less competitive majors or talent based admissions. It’s accurate, but you need to understand your major of choice dramatically affects your chances of admission.
Also low stat students admitted to very selective schools may have had a hook e.g. recruited athlete.
Naviance is also self reported data where students have a drop down box to indicate their app status. It can be possible some on the lower ends of the scales failed to report their results as well as the fact that when reporting results you don’t take into account majors.
Naviance is only as good as what gets put into the system from your HS. Talk to your HS guidance counselor to understand how/what data is input into the system.
@UltraCola Naviance is pretty accurate. Nothing the least bit surprising for 50% rejection rate for kids with 1400 range SAT at NYU. Also nothing surprising about the rare, low outlier acceptances. The reality of college admissions today is that there are no guarantees, and the reach, match and safety concepts are best viewed in context of your grades and tests at your school. A safety is when your scores are in the midst of a field of pure green. A match is where your scores put you in an even scattering of red and green. A reach is where there is more red than green, and the more red you see, the more of a reach it is. That’s why even for the tippy top kids (3.9-4.0 UW 1580-1600 SAT) at the highest rated HS in the country, the tippy top schools like HYPMS are still reach schools.
I wouldn’t even say a safety is when your scores are in an area of all green, it really depends on your major and the applicant pool year to year. My daughter’s friend was applying this year under computer science, for several schools he was just the highest student rejected from our school, his scores and grades were way above the whole cluster of green. It was a particularly competitive year and he had a particularly competitive major. I’ll bet this year’s stats for many schools look far different than in the past.
The scattergrams on naviance are from self-reported statistics. A rejected applicant who got a 1100 SAT with a 3.1 GPA could have just checked off “Admitted” without any ramifications other than being a troll. Just be wary of outliers.
@Ditto123 one would like to think that doesn’t happen, but I’m sure you’re correct and things like that do happen. However, the alternative to Naviance being chance-me threads or anonymous ramblings, I think that Naviance is the best, though not a perfect source.