<p>What I meant was that conventional wisdom on CC is that USC and especially Rice are “reaches” for everyone (apparently because they admit less than 25%). What my son was looking for was two “safeties” in case he did not get in somewhere higher on his list. I did not consult USN&WR to check their report of top 25% stats for the schools, but rather just looked at Naviance. What I saw was that all of the kids from his HS that had applied to those schools with his stats that gotten in. In my mind that changed them from a “reach” to a “safety”. Had I not concluded that they would be “safeties”, he might have applied elsewhere. He applied, was accepted and received merit scholarships from both.</p>
<p>I haven’t entered into this discussion, but I’ll share our experience.</p>
<p>My son shared every acceptance, WL, and rejection with his GC. I know he benefited from earlier years of this information, (especially via Naviance) so why not help others in our HS?</p>
<p>It never occurred to me that he should keep this information private. We don’t share information about FA, mortgage, bank accounts, income, ss#, raises, etc. but college acceptances are open knowledge in my view.</p>
<p>Yes, that is part of the problem, you listened to CC’c conventional wisdon (i.e., “No one’s gettin in anywhere!”) My hunch is that if you had perused the collegeboard website and the college’s own published materials, you would have easily discovered that your son had a great shot at admission to those two schools.</p>
<p>soozie,
I view our public high school as run by the government (that is, “us”) for the benefit of our children. If we don’t want our public school to demand certain personal information from our kids, then it is our prerogative to prevent them from doing so. Why is that a problem for anyone here or deserving of condemnation?</p>
<p>In spite of repeated messages of help from two of you, I remain unable to quote like the rest of you guys. I’m not gonna lie, I want to put my fist through the wall. </p>
<p>No need to waste any more time on it…I’ll just continue my primitive cut-and-paste method. But I must admit (for those of you in my age-bracket) the Dylan lyric, “You’re an idiot, babe, it’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe,”…has crossed my mind several times in the last few moments.</p>
<p>Ah, well…All is not lost…think I’ll go grab the CD.</p>
<p>Thanks to all for posting so passionately on this topic. Clearly we have strong feelings!</p>
<p>soozievt…yes, D is a soprano (rising hs senior). Mostly classical and 2-3 MTs a year (though she avoids belting like the plague.) Where is your D studying?</p>
<p>I still haven’t seen anyone say it should be mandated, without choice. If you’re referring to Barrons, he gave a condition. Someone can choose not to use the guidance services in his scenario, just as someone can choose not to apply for financial aid if they don’t want to give personal info or not apply to a state supported school if they think the state supported government should not have personal info. Are you saying you haven’t called the school officials loony lefties? If only loony lefties think it can be mandated and the school officials think it can be mandated, then, ergo, the school officials are loony lefties.</p>
<p>Type - [ quote] copy and paste what you want quoted
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You do type out the word quote. Then you paste in your quote. When you do it, leave out the space between the first bracket and the word “quote”.</p>
<p>Practice with “preview post” until you get it right.</p>
<p>This is much like the issue of mandatory pre-school vaccinations. These clearly benefit most of society and the positive effect is weakened markedly when some don’t participate. At least in that case there was an unfounded health concern over the vaccines. In this case there is no realistic concern over invasion of privacy or personal data. Just as your test scores are reported to the school as it serves a public purpose, so does results data on college placement–both accepts and rejects. It allows for better future guidance of students and also can help uncover weaknesses in the high school college prep programs. Worrying about some nefarious purpose is loony IMHO.</p>
<p>Re post #242 from Limabeans: we certainly let the school’s college counselor (not the same as the guidance counselor, but rather a part-time employee supported by Parents club) know about all of our D’s admission decisions, honors, and merit scholarships. She had helped us so much and it was also going to help future classes. Also, she got into some schools which were not slam dunks for her, so again, that info could help other students. At the time our school didn’t have Naviance.</p>
<p>Test scores are reported to the school only if the student enters a high school code on the registration form. Reporting scores to the high school is optional.</p>
Well, sure! I can consider your actions and opinions irrational or immoral, even if I think they should be legal. That’s the only kind of condemnation I’m talking about.</p>
<p>In another thread I mentioned that my dh and I feel that there has to be alot of potential for use and mis-use of all of the info the common app gathers–for “back door” marketing, stats etc…This is a good example of this…what does Naviance have to do with the Common App? Is that infor from the apps going into Naviance? </p>
<p>and what can a user of the Common App do to elect to NOT have the info used/passed on…</p>
<p>sort of like that large social networking site fb, where you are having to elect to protect your profile or it can be open unknowingly by use of other platforms.</p>
<p>As I mentioned before --our GCs claim all kinds of reasons behind NOT allowing rising SRs and families access…
I think its about money…and/or “control” and perhaps IF parents saw where kids were accepted–they might be shocked to see where the kids of this private did and did not get in…</p>
<p>Absolutely does not cost the hs to give each student a password - I do it all day long. </p>
<p>Naviance is partnering with Common App so that if you apply to a common app school - the hs can send your transcript, SSR and teacher recs electronically through Naviance - they link in some fashion to your common application - and arrive at the college together. So for the college, instead of getting the application on-line thru common app. and then waiting to get the transcript in the mail, having to scan it, and then match things up - it all arrives together electronically. We are not actually using this service yet - some issues/bugs I want to see resolved first - but I am sure that in a few years this will be very standard - much like how applying on-line has replaced paper apps in the past few years.</p>
<p>But to address your concern - info from the app is not going into Naviance and the GC cannot see the app - it’s just a way for the hs to send documents to colleges that accept the common app.</p>
<p>First of all, private schools do not get a 100% feedback either. Other than where the year end grades are to be sent, nothing is reliable unless you get the originals of the awards letters anyways. People do lie about this info. </p>
<p>However, there is a critical mass that will be honest with the info, especially in the larger schools where most or many of the students are college bound. Without this info, you cannot get a relevant Naviance graph for kids, and that is something to benefit future kids. If you don’t care about that, and truly feel the info is not to be shared, you can challenge the school. My guess is that they are not going to be able to carry through with their threat. Or you can just give them the info you feel like sharing which many kids do anyways in schools with a lot of cooperation in this regard. </p>
<p>The SAT scores are verifiable most of the time because those are sent by College Board and other testing agencies directly to the high school if the kid fills out that info on the test sheet and most kids do. If you really don’t want to send that info to your school, you can just fill in another school code–don’t know if they allow you to leave that space blank. My son’s info never made it to his school because he put in the wrong code by accident. </p>
<p>And you can figure out SAT scores of some kids easily. If your kids is one of many who apply to state U or another college that is popular with the high school, that is difficult and maybe impossible to identify. However, if like in your case, Soozie, your daughters were standouts. How many kids were accepted to NYU and Brown from your school? Also one of your girls was a val. Wouldn’t take much to figure out which was the blip on the chart for them for those schools. And from that data, they can get the SAT range and guess for the other colleges. </p>
<p>My sons’ private school was small enough and their personalized “Naviance-style” chart was specific enough that I could identify a goodly number of kids just going through the pages. If I really worked at it, I could probably match up most of the kids I know with the data, and my one son would probably be able to get every last one of them. </p>
<p>My current junior goes to an all boys’ school. Looking at their Naviance data, I could identify a few kids I know from past years with no problem at all. If it were a coed school it would have been even easier.</p>
<p>Also, as others have mentioned, in many info sharing communities, the condition under which you get the info is that you share yours. Not that there are many checks for how accurate the info is that you provide. Sort of like Wikipedia in that it is done with some trust in what is being given. </p>
<p>You don’t have to use the Common App, and there are ways to keep most of your info private if you really don’t want to give it out. I just don’t see the big deal about it. We gave our schools all of the data, because we really want future students to have that information.</p>
<p>Depending on the size of your school (and number of data points in Naviance) – that could have been a huge mistake. Of course those clearly were good bet schools, but a good bet is not always a safety. Its great that your son was in fact accepted – but if your school’s was at odds in any way with the data at large for the school — it could have been quite erroneous.</p>
<p>That’s the problem with Naviance. It looks at a reduced set of datapoints under the assumption that the particular school involved is a significant variable. But there could be other factors at play impacting the data.</p>
<p>Solodad, I don’t see where Catera45 says it should be mandated. I think it is a ridiculous thing to mandate for a number of reasons including the one that enforcing would be a bureaucratic nightmare. </p>
<p>As for being condemned for not sharing the info, I haven’t seen that happen. My sons’ school has a great reporting rate and the GCs are active about asking for the info, but there is no condemnation for not reporting it. My sons were too danged lazy to gather and bring in the original acceptance letters, so I did, as did many parents who were annoyed at the kids, not the school for non compliance to this request. But there were no announcements or anything about anyone who did not comply. </p>
<p>However, in cases where most people share information that is beneficial to many, and there are some hold outs there who are verbal about it, I think it is completely natural for folks to feel that those holdouts are selfish. Just human nature. I don’t think they would be condemned, but it would not be looked upon kindly. Sort of like the guy in the group that insists on a check being calculated to the dollar for his share instead of splitting the bill equally, when everyone else is in agreement to go that way. There could be good reason for going against the grain, but yes, it does not “look good”. </p>
<p>Just curious, why would anyone not want that college info compiled to be used for future students? One reason that comes to mind is that those families and kids don’t want others to know they were denied rather than waitlisted or accepted as they are telling everyone. Talking in general conversation about those things is like telling fish stories, but having to commit in writing as what happened tends to make all but the most pathological liars hesitate.</p>
<p>In our case, my kids did not disclose because, as you yourself have seen, cpt, in some cases it is quite easy to determine which students match which dots on the graph. It was not because my kids did not want info compiled to be used for future students, but because they did not feel that the data was used in a way that sufficiently protects their privacy.</p>
<p>Some people are perfectly fine with disclosing their gpas and test scores to any stranger who might happen to inquire. I have seen/heard this quite often. Personally, I think it is quite tacky, as it is invariably done by students who have high stats. (Brag, much?) My kids are not that way - they did not share this info with even their closest friends, because they felt it was unnecessary for anyone to know - like disclosing one’s income or IQ to an acquaintance.</p>
<p>If there was a way for the info to be used in such a way that identities are secure - and perhaps this is why fogfog’s school does not allow students and parents access to Naviance - then it would be another matter. In our case, we were able to discern identities of students on the Naviance graph immediately; so after the first look, my kids decided not to participate and did not utilize it in making their application decisions at all. They are not paranoid, unkind, unhelpful, self-centered or lazy - all terms that have been used on this thread to describe non-participants. They simply do not want anyone to know their stats for whatever personal reasons - I (obviously) don’t see anything wrong that. Federal law agrees with them.</p>