How accurate do you feel naviance is with regards to your own school? Do you find the information accurate or do the schools ‘alter’ or ‘omit’ information and do they have the access to do that? I was under the impression that the applied/admitted/denied/wait list information was supposed to be accurate since it is of no use if it is not. I have found several instances of omitted or inaccurate information on our school so not sure who is altering those numbers. Anyone have any insight? Not sure why I had to pay for it if it doesn’t reflect real numbers/information.
Without seeing the same data as you, I cannot say. But what you view as “omitted/inaccurate” may be a result of too few data points for a university that the high school is not sharing for privacy reasons of the student(s).
@skieurope I understand the lack of data when few if any kids have applied to from our school on a particular college. My concern is, for example, 1 kid applied this year to a school and actually 3 did or only 1 shows accepted when in fact 2 were or a previous year the college ‘accepted’ 2 when they actually accepted more. That kind of information. The colleges I’m looking at have had more than a few applications and get at least a few each year so they are not the odd school that no one applied to. Also, my D got a GT offer and there is a GT ‘response’ for her to check (in the accepted/denied/ waitlist etc) and she checked that…then a few days later it showed up as denied…she changed it back but someone else clearly changed it
@WithGrace I hardily agree…Naviance is only as accurate as the information that is inputted and the rules that a particular HS has surrounding it’s use. For our particular HS it was not very accurate. Students are encouraged to use it but there is no mandatory policy. Some start with it and never follow up with admission results, some don’t use it at all.
Naviance Predictive data had no real value to us. In fact, if we had followed the red, yellow, green gauges. DDs should not have bothered to even apply to many of the schools to which they were accepted. At the other end of the spectrum, Naviance put DD2018 solidly in the green zone for UW, where she was flat out denied, and given that she was OOS she should never have been in the green zone to begin with! So, for our experiences Naviance’s predictive value = none. The scattergrams do not provide enough data points to give an accurate picture. Sure it lets you know if you are in the right state, but definitely doesn’t tell you if you are in the right city, let alone on the right street!
All of that information is highly contingent upon the accuracy of inputted data, which for our HS is poorly monitored.
BTW, CC and Naviance are owned by the same company.
It depends on a few things.
- How does the GC office collect the info? If students don’t report back their info (maybe just say where they are attending, and don’t give the rest of the results), then the GC’s office doesn’t have complete info to enter. I suspect big schools often don’t track down everybody’s info, and maybe don’t hear about things like waitlist acceptances that aren’t taken, for example.
- How accurate is the GC’s office at data entry? If they make mistakes or don’t enter some stuff, then the data could be bad.
- How far back do they show? An acceptance from 6-7 years ago might not get in now. Going far back gives lots of data, but it may not all be relevant now.
- A change in fortunes in a give school can cause years with odd results that you don’t realize are anomalies. Say something bad happens in the spring at a school and their yield is down that year, so kids with lower stats get in. Or a school wins the NCAA basketball tournament and gets a flood of applications next year — making them more selective — then things go back to normal the next year. You don’t realize that and it skews someof the results from “normal” for that school.
- You can never know if a person was hooked, had a bad recommendation or essay, etc. So you don’t really know if those dots match you or not.
For schools that were admitted for too few apps, we talked to the GC and they gave us a verbal sense of what our kids’ chances were.
At least in our HS the guidance counselors collect and input the data. So the accuracy completely depends on the quality of the information reported to the guidance counselors. Our HS shows users the previous 3 years of acceptances and does not show information for colleges with less than 10 applicants.
I should add that at least in our HS the guidance counselors have more detailed information on their Naviance than is given to the students/parents. For example when we were discussing my D’s chances at her top college my D’s guidance counselor was able to break down which acceptances were ED, for legacy/athletes etc. which was valuable information.
@labegg @intparent @happy1 Thank you! I am inclined to believe that our school is selectively reporting and ‘altering’ information. I know for a fact that certain acceptances are not reflected for certain colleges and others, for the same students, is being reported. I am left to assume that the HS is choosing what to ‘share’ and what not to and it has nothing to do with # of applicants or what information they are given. Not a big school and it seems that only the tippy top elites are not being reflected accurately, which is disturbing.
Ours shows the past 3 years, which I think is the norm, in the actual number applied/accepted/attends but the scattergram shows many more. The current year is not reflective of what is true as to acceptances and leads me to believe that the school is ‘holding back’ what would show the credentials of those accepted…if that makes sense.
I guess the script that ‘many of our students are accepted to elite colleges’ doesn’t accurately reflect that you must be a recruited athlete to be one of those students and by withholding the current year they don’t have to explain why the entire upper right of the scattergram shows denied and waitlisted and the bottom left has the only green check marks. We will all have moved on by the time it is reflected.
I don’t mind playing the game but I should be given the rules prior to playing. I could have saved a couple of mortgage payments in fees had I been given accurate odds and chosen, which we would have, to not play in that lottery.
I was required to pay for naviance, and if I pay for something I guess I should expect it to be what it claims to be.
If you are the Patriots you should know if you are competing in Gillette stadium to play the Jets or being sent to Fenway Park to play baseball against the Red Soxs!
I think a lot of schools just are sloppy. I wouldn’t necessarily assume it is intentional. And if students are sloppy in reporting, that adds a factor of error. Also, many schools do no entry until the next fall – they wait until summer melt is done and students have settled. The purpose isn’t to show you this year’s info, it is for future students.
And Naviance is just a data tool. It doesn’t say what YOUR results will be. We didn’t pay for Naviance access, it was just part of what our GC provided. I am curious whether other users of CC have had to pay directly for Naviance use at their school.
There are other sources of info for chances. You can Google the Common Data Set for free and see test score ranges, GPA ranges, and acceptance percentages. You can start a chances thread out here, and most of the adults who respond are probably giving you a reasonable estimate of your chances. You can look at last year’s results threads to see patterns for acceptance. I think you are blaming Naviance because you didn’t really do your own research.
For colleges that admit by division or major, how many high schools create separate Naviance plots for each division or major that has its own admission standards?
General admission data for a college (Naviance, Common Data Set, etc.) may be very misleading if the college has greatly varying selectivity by division or major.
@inparent No, not at all! We did research, have good results for our child. My OP was meant to get information on what other experience was with naviance. I paid for it, others may have not and had whatever the fee is included in their school taxes/fees/whatever. If I pay for something I expect certain things and I don’t believe I got what I paid for. My question was meant to find out if others have had similar experiences. I asked a question, I would never ask a bunch of strangers on the internet for a “chance me”. I don’t “blame” naviance for anything, I would like information on others who have experience if they too have had inaccurate information and if they too have had, what I can only assume is a direct result of the HS selectivity in reporting it. It was a question. Yes I have or No I haven’t would be sufficient! Again, If I pay for it I expect it to be accurate, no more no less!
Just to add and clarify, my own child’s “results” were entered by her and then altered and we had to go back and ‘correct’ it, this I know for a fact and since we didn’t change the decision someone else did so just trying to find if there is anyone else who may have experienced anything similar
If the kids are entering their own info, that is probably the source of the problems. I think most schools only allow the GC’s office to update the scattergrams.
@intparent Thank you, I had assumed the same which is why when my own child’s “decision” was changed and we didn’t do it I had to assume that the GC was inputting information
In our HS the guidance counselors enter information. I also don’t think that our HS updates Naviance in “real time” – I think for privacy purposes our HS waits for a class to graduate before making their data visible to people outside of the guidance department. Students/parents only see results from the prior three graduating classes.
I don’t know. I just logged on for the first time this weekend. The guidance counselor has my kid inputted with his unweighted grade, but some of the admitted kids have gpas over 4.0, so they have obviously been inputted with their weighted gpas. Seems like it might be kind of a crapshoot. Plus, they haven’t converted the old SAT scores to new SAT score, so my kid with a 1560 shows up as having a poor chance of admission. I’m certainly glad it’s a free service through our school.
My introduction to Naviance, via my son’s GC, was frankly scary. Why? Bc every prestigious college we took a quick peak at showed DOZENS of applications from his HS in the past few years. Even very far flung, famous but non-Ivies. I was frankly shocked. What a killjoy (thinking my son might be the first applicant to XYZ college from his HS in years). Better to know than not to know, however.
With regards to our HS’s Naviance accuracy, I can only say I’ve never heard about it being questioned–not to imply OP didn’t ask a very legitimate question.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Ours is ‘real time’ with current year and scores. I asked a friend to have her child check theirs and they too are seeing ‘real time’ (meaning 2018 class is listed), they can see my kid on hers as ‘check marks’ and the gpa/scores are correct and we can see theirs.
The missing info on some schools is also obvious and we know it’s not because they don’t have it as our GC’s get a phone call from elite schools that our school has a ‘relationship’ with a day or two before acceptance day at those schools, so they know who got in before the kids do.
Our school encouraged us to use Naviance, and we had to pay for it. GC’s showed us how to use it and all of the information that would be of use to us.
My contention, I guess, is that all of that information is available from our own research, which we did, to any school via the internet including scattergrams using gpa and test scores. What is not, and is of the real importance, is where all those numbers pertain to our particular school. This is the real importance of naviance for you.
Like it or not certain schools just aren’t taking more than one or two or none from your school…some schools get 20, some others get none…without a hook. So the information for your particular school and ‘who’ or ‘who with what’ gets in is the more important information and comes down to lots of hard earned money being spent when it doesn’t have to be if they showed the real information.
If your child is in the top right corner of the scattergram and has all the ‘extra’ whatever’s checked off then it is important to know. If school X had shown that 2 kids applied and got in back in December in the early round and that information was reflected we could have saved that money on applying and sending scores. This isn’t Dumb and Dumber and a ‘million to one’ would not have made us think there was a chance and we would have taken it off the list and added a different school. This applies not only to “elite” schools but also any oos school with a cap on oos students as well. Your particular HS does matter and naviance is supposed to give us that reference point for our school.
I see this as a HS issue and not naviance so I guess my advice would be that you ask the questions at your school as to what is really being shown to you and what they are hiding. You live and learn! Thank you again!