<p>This has been something I have been thinking about for awhile now ever since I saw the GPA/SAT scores for all the colleges that I will apply to next year a couple days ago.</p>
<p>For some of the reach schools I'm applying to (Ivy League exactly), the unweighted GPA is rather high for those that get accepted (3.9 or 4.0) as well as the SAT scores (2250-close to 2400) even though not a lot of students in my high school apply to Ivy League schools in the first place.</p>
<p>But regardless on the small sample size that the data is based upon for the Naviance stats, do these statistics tend to be a cutoff for kids at my school?</p>
<p>I’d say it is a very bad indicator. The average for Harvard in my school is 1800~ SAT and an little bit above avg GPA. It was because he was a recruited athlete. So i’d say it only gives a good indicator based on the amount of data it collects. So for a university that everyone applies to from your school will probably be more accurate than the one that a single person applied to.</p>
<p>The downside of Naviance as wmurphy says, is that it does not show hooks: recruited athletes or other students colleges recruit. I do think that is is a good indicator for all but the tippy top schools because for everyone but the hooked, they are reaches. You just do not know what they’re looking for.</p>
<p>At best, Naviance is good for telling you whether you have a CHANCE of getting in. Like if there are a bunch of red dots towards the left and middle part of the graph, and mostly, or more green dots and few red ones in the top right, then obviously you’ll want to be in the top right part so you’ll know you at least have a chance of getting in.</p>
<p>I agree with all the above posters and also the fact that naviance doesn’t take into consideration a students particular class rigor. So mostly I would say it really only does just give you an idea if you have somewhat of a chance or not.</p>
<p>I like Naviance graphs. You can usually spot the outliers (green dot on the midst of red ones) and just assume that those students had some other advantage you don’t know about. As long as you only look at the overall trends, and don’t console yourself with those random accepts in the middle of all those denies, it is the single most helpful source, because it is specific to applicants from YOUR school.</p>
<p>I agree with #4 and #6 … I’ve seen the charts for a bunch of schools for 2 of my kids and I thought they were pretty helpful as long as one looks at the charts objectively. We also assumed any outlier acceptances had hooks and they typically were pretty obvious. The other acceptances, if there were enough of them, seem to indicate the affective minimum GPA/SATs required for admission … and at top schools it also is very clear meeting these minimums is not an automatic in. </p>
<p>For example, the graph for a top 10 school will show 10 acceptances among 100 applicants … pretty much on par with the schools acceptance rate … there is 1 acceptance whose GPA and SATs are substantially lower than the other accepts (assume a major hook) … the other 9 acceptances are all above a 3.8 GPA and a 2100 SAT … however there were about 75 applicants meeting those standards. Does this allow a student to predict with certainty if they will be accepted? … absolutely not. Does this allow the student to see if they are in the hunt? … absolutley</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t use Naviance, so I had to rely of cappex dot com and parchment dot com, based on recommendation from other people on CC. Both gave very accurate projections for my kids. We also browsed through the common data sets for our favorite colleges to see more details, but as mentioned by others above, it’s hard to tell what ‘hook’ any outliers in the data had as part of their application.</p>
<p>Does Naviance show data about merit aid? That would be really helpful to understand what colleges offer for merit aid for different types of students coming out of one’s high school.</p>
<p>Naviance is dependent on how well your school updates their data in it, as well. Our school is very diligent in updating the data for each Sr. class and it’s proven to be a great indicator for our daughter so far. Granted we still have 4 schools out of 8 to hear from, but the 4 we’ve gotten decisions on, it’s been accurate.</p>
<p>It’s extremely helpful if you learn how to recognize hooked applicants, which is pretty easy. it gives you a very reliable idea of what it takes from your school.</p>
<p>I think that Naviance gives a decent predictor. I think it’s more useful if a lot of students from your school have applied to the college. For example…Naviance says that 500+ students have applied to UMass Amherst from my HS, so there’s a lot of points on the graph to look at.</p>
<p>However…all of a sudden, my Naviance is showing really skewed data. I don’t know if they changed it to show weighted GPA or something like that, (which is ridiculous at my HS, it’s out of 5.9), but now every college is showing that you need something like a 5.3 to get in. Now I can’t trust Naviance. ;_;</p>
<p>Elleya, ours did that too. It was a coding error of some sort. We had to change the view from SAT to ACT and let that load and then go back again to get the proper graph to show up.</p>
<p>The other factor you have to keep in mind is that admissions have gotten a lot more competitive in the last five years. Naviance in my school has data for 5 years. So, you should move the averages a little to the top right corner to get a more realistic picture of what your real chances are.</p>
<p>The other thing I thought of is that at my D’s school they have data for 4 years and they only show the results for schools that more than 5 students applied to during those 4 years. So if you applying to a school that is not really popular among other students at your HS then you can’t see any results. But is pretty good for the state schools and other more popular schools</p>
<p>I agree that it is a good starting point when you’re a Junior with no real idea where you should apply. But that being said, it only tells you about students from your school, and just what their GPAs/SATs were. Hooks, ECs and outstanding essays are not taken into consideration, and, truly, they all make a difference. My S got into 3 small LAC selective to highly selective colleges where Naviance told him he had very little if any chance, and for 2 of those, his GC told him not to even bother applying. I know it was his essays and ECs that got him in. Another factor wrt Naviance, at least at my S’s school, is that acceptances are self-reporting - if the kids don’t report their acceptances, they are not uploaded into the system for next year’s class, so the data is not entirely accurate. So use it as a guide, but not an absolute determinant of where you’ll get in. Good luck.</p>