If the school is consistent about collecting and entering data, then Naviance can be quite useful. Our HS wouldn’t show schools where the number of applicants are very small. I’d say that is a reasonable request to make to ask them to hide those charts. But I’d suggest you pay it forward to future students to not pull your kid’s data completely.
You may not have used it much, but for a college with a lot of applicants from your HS, it is helpful. Colleges do look at different high schools in different lights. It is a tool that can help reveal those patterns.
If Naviance is so helpful, then aren’t college admissions mainly determined by GPA and test scores? I assume it has no info on EC or LoR. (I never used it btw)
Can Naviance be filtered by race and gender, e.g., black males, white females, Asian males, …? If yes, it’s really useful, particularly with the data of the entire country.
The beauty of Naviance is that it is for your school. If you go to a school where the grading is tough and colleges know that, you may see that contrary to what people say on CC, a 3.3 may be all you need for a certain competitive school. Or that alternatively, the only kids that have ever been accepted to xyz school have had SAT scores above 1530.
Likewise, you may discover that a 3.8 at your school is not so highly valued by colleges you are considering.
Of course there are kids who are admitted who fall outside the stats - the recruited athletes, children of donors, etc.
Naviance allows you to do a lot of background work on your chances from your school so that you can use the CC’s time with you well.
Naviance is helpful to show how STATS do affect / trend in admissions. It is not perfect (does not show hookss, etc) but it truly gives a dose of reality to many kids because it’s based on their school.
My kids school does not show this year’s applicants until next year (after my kid graduates.) Is that how naviance works for everyone?
The other big advantage of Naviance is that you can see what sorts of stats are getting rejected by schools you are interested in. Lots of kids see that they are above, say, the 75% line for a college and think “I’m a shoe-in-- my stats are better than three quarters of the students at that school.” But the most selective schools may be REJECTING a large majority of students with stats above the 75% line. It really helps to see that. And as others say, it’s the stats from your own high school, which is even more relevant.
For most schools, stats are the main driving force. For the super elite schools it is clear from naviance that a great GPA and test scores are not enough.
It’s too bad that Naviance doesn’t allow you to expand your data set beyond your own school. For example, we have two high schools in our district, they have essentially the same demographics. Most students in our district apply to regional schools; very few apply to Midwest or California schools. As a result, Naviance either doesn’t show any data or has too few data points to be meaningful. It would be very useful if we could add the schools data together or even add nearby towns.
Similarly, it would be useful to combine data from boarding schools with similar demographics so, for example, Groton and Middlesex data could be combined to give a more robust picture of application data for schools that are less commonly chosen by their students.
@HMom16 good points. My kids had similar issues as they applied to a lot of small LACs that very few kids in our district even think of, thus no data was shown.
My kid is the only kid fromher HS to,even apply to her college. She was given the choice of having her data entered on Naviance. She was a graduating HS senior, and really didn’t give two hoots if others knew her stats…or figured out it was her.
She loved her undergrad college…and hoped others would apply there too.
Honestly, I’m not sure why this matters so much to the OP. In a year or two…no students at the HS are going tomeven think about her kid.
I understand the majority of you wants to keep your naviance data about your kids and more power to you. I will not argue against you.
First, for us is a privacy issue (remember they show even one (1) data point if the kid is accepted or rejected) and having my kid (we don’t allow facebook, twitter, Instagram etc.) data in a third party company where I have no idea what they do with is a concern for us.
Second, I said multiple times, kid’s SAT and GPA is not a sure way to figure out admission chances so Naviance must be taken with a grain of salt.
And all of you in old ages, we did not have naviance and we did fine with the college process.
@LisaNCState, you keep stating “I said multiple times, kid’s SAT and GPA is not a sure way to figure out admission chances so Naviance must be taken with a grain of salt”
People ARE taking it with a grain of salt and realize that athletic recruiting, 1st gen status and a dozen other factors can elevate the chances of an “unlikely” applicant. Have faith in your fellow men and women, specifically their ability to evaluate what they see online
Maybe here on CC, but definitely not what I observed in the past year or so elsewhere online. (I know my comment is not topic specific, but l cannot help it)
They can’t take anything with a grain of salt if they don’t have ANYTHING to take with a grain of salt (ie when people dont share their GPA and scores).
“My kids school does not show this year’s applicants until next year (after my kid graduates.) Is that how naviance works for everyone?”
To my knowledge, yes. That’s the way my kids’ HS did it.
“First, for us is a privacy issue (remember they show even one (1) data point if the kid is accepted or rejected) and having my kid (we don’t allow facebook, twitter, Instagram etc.) data in a third party company where I have no idea what they do with is a concern for us.”
It’s just two data points - GPA and test scores. It doesn’t say Lisa’sSon. There is no personal info connecting it to your son in cyberspace.
“And all of you in old ages, we did not have naviance and we did fine with the college process.”
And kids don’t apply to 3 or 4 schools anymore either handwriting or using a Selectric typewriter to fill in a paper application. Times change and the process is much more competitive and complex. Having the info on Naviance is helpful.
As far as data points, it’s easy to see which schools are more holistic and which are more stats driven. Based on my kids’ school’s data, colleges like Princeton and Georgetown showed up as very stats predictable with a tighter fit to the graphs. Schools like Brown and Williams, in contrast, required high scores as well but results were less predictable and more scattered.
“having my kid (we don’t allow facebook, twitter, Instagram etc.) data in a third party company where I have no idea what they do with is a concern for us.”
You will have to allow LinkedIn when he start looking for internships.
