<p>If I'm not mistaken, Naviance uses each high school's applicant data from the past five or so years. Well, a LOT has changed in the last five years. Heck, a lot has changed in the last two or three years. How useful is this tool, really? My suspicion is that some kids are looking at Naviance and thinking, "Well, I can get into XYZ University because a couple of people from my school got in with 1900 SATs and 3.5 GPAs," without being aware that in just the last couple of years those stats may no longer be good enough to get into that school. How heavily do you rely on Naviance? </p>
<p>Naviance has a lot of variables. You don’t know if it’s a recruited athlete or a developmental applicant. Or a legacy. Or the son of a major donor. </p>
<p>Naviance is a tool. To be used. Take it with a grain of salt. </p>
<p>Yes, I think the “special cases” often are apparent, especially when they’re real outliers. But others are much more subtle. A good GC can probably help a student navigate this, but unfortunately my D’s GC is just adequate (public school). </p>
<p>Like they say in the brokerage ads- “our past performance may not reflect the future” or whatever language their legal counsel prefers. You need to be an educated user of all these tools- Naviance, the schools own published stats, the graduation surveys which shows what their alums are doing 9 months out. A college with three med school applicants which boasts “100% med school admissions rate” is both factually correct and quite misleading.</p>
<p>So learn to use the tools.</p>
<p>Reach, match, safety. No matter what, I think kids should have those. Yes, some students line up too many reaches, but others don’t have enough reaches. </p>
<p>For us, it was useful to see how many students got in, which you wouldn’t have known from the list of matriculations.</p>
<p>Naviance is also only as good as (1) students are about reporting their final results, and (2) GC offices are at entering in all the data they get. Some schools aren’t very good about keeping up with who got off waitlists or chasing down students for all their final results. Or at entering all the data they get.</p>
<p>Naviance is just a starting point. It helps some families realize that …“oh dear, decent stats are no guarantee of getting accepted to college xyz” </p>
<p>As others have posted above, the info available on Naviance varies by high school. I don’t know if schools have to pay more to provide more detailed info, or if some schools elect to publish different info, but reporting categories are not the same across all high schools.</p>
<p>I agree with you about the uselessness of old data. Our school now reports seven years of data but I have seen some that report ten. I don’t know if there isn’t an easy way to delete old data. </p>
<p>I also agree about the garbage in, garbage out. Our HS asked Srs to complete a report in May, but having compared scattergrams from one year to the next, I know that the info is not accurate. It is another useful tool, especially given the wide variations in GPAs across high schools.</p>
<p>I noticed when D2 applied that D1’s old account was still available, so I went in and looked. They hadn’t posted all her information on acceptances. We weren’t really relying on Naviance anyway (D2 applied to mostly schools where there weren’t many past applicants from her HS, so the charts weren’t available anyway).</p>
<p>Yes, I agree you have to take it with a grain of salt, and it can give false hope. I know my graduated son’s data are on there incorrectly. He did better on the ACT vs SAT but on the graphs, I think he is plotted for each, even though he submitted only ACT. And asyou point out, a lot HAS changed in even 5-10 years.</p>
<p>I echo the GC comment, try as I may our GC person in charge of Naviance doesn’t have most of my dds datapoints correct. She turned off weighting somehow which freaked me out, turned it back on, put dates in wrong for test dates, omitted her best test and gave her credit for taking an SAT her frosh yr (which she never took)</p>
<p>I think perhaps there is a whole thread we could do on guidance counselors! But let’s not do that today–I’m stressed out enough waiting for D’s ED decision and I don’t need anything else to worry about! :)</p>
<p>And you can also gripe about the accuracy of tomorrow’s weather forecast that’s based on the weather from the preceding 5 days.</p>
<p>Always bring an umbrella.</p>
<p>The Naviance data for our son’s school is meticulously maintained, goes back seven years, and does not rely on student input. The college counseling office keeps track of matriculation for every student and is very communicative and transparent about how to use it, but Naviance doesn’t /can’t capture the transfer phenomenon. It seems that many kids from his school who lose out to classmates in the head-to-head competition senior year, successfully transfer to their first-choice colleges after attending one year at a second- or third-choice college. Transferring colleges is not unusual in general, but I was surprised by often it occurs as “plan B” to circumvent the downside of attending a very competitive high school.</p>
<p>Some data is better than no data. It would have been nice to have Naviance data at our school. </p>