All - In a recent post on the “common CC fallacies” thread, one contributor posted this as a fallacy:
“Thinking that a highly selective Div I school is a match for your student based on the Naviance data from your school. Even though your student could be in the top 80% you don’t know how much of the data is from recruited athletes. Acceptance is not a numbers game.”
I very recently got access to the Naviance portal for my D’s high school. The applied/accepted data confirmed what we knew: my D’s public, urban HS does not have a track record of sending kids to highly/most selective schools. A handful to be sure, but a very small handful.
The fallacy post got me thinking. How do you think AOs use a high school’s track record of sending kids to the school the AO works for (and/or to schools the AO views as comparable to the school the AO works for)? A non-exclusive list of possibilities that come to mind:
Do they use it to project "yield" - if a low percentage of kids who are accepted historically actually attend, is that (probably small) mark against a new applicant b/c AO becomes skeptical that "kids from this particular HS will actually attend the college?
and/or
Do they use it to contextual the school - if the school gets a bunch of students admitted each year to selective schools, is that a mark in favor of the school's quality (and vice versa)?
and/or
Relatedly, do they use it to contextualize the student - if the school does not send many kids to selective schools (in fact has a lower percentage of kids who go on to 4-year colleges than private high schools or suburban public high schools), how does that affect the way an AO may look at a student (could go both ways I suppose - plus that achieving in a school with all the challenges of an urban high school and/or negative that not competing against a student body with very large proportions of highly competitive students)?
Also wondering how to view the Naviance data and how you used it, as a student or parent of student, in the admissions process.
Our D loves her high school, as do we, she gets a strong education there, has available to her AP and IB classes, and her test scores (AP exams, etc.) will support the notion that the classes she is taking prepare her to do well. So not suggesting that where you go to high school is determinative, admission decision are not holistic, or that Naviance admitted/attended “pros” can’t be squandered and “cons” can’t be overcome, just wondering about this very small Naviance slice of the world.
I think AOs try to know the schools in their region relatively well but that there are some they know/like better. For example, they may know from experience that there is so much depth at a given school that any kid who has done well there will be able to handle their college.
On the flip side, if a GC has pushed for a student and then the student has decided to go elsewhere, that could sour things for all subsequent applicants, particularly if the AO had to use capital.
While I think that in general, AOS try to give everyone a fair shot, I believe that this doesn’t always happen. I can think of one college, selective but not ridiculously so, that rejected every kid from our school for 7 years. Last year, with a new admissions dean, they accepted 2. It’s possible that those 2 were the first who seemed like real fits, but it’s also possible that the new person had a different view of the school or was actively looking for a different type of student. Hard to know.
I found Naviance helpful for spotting major trends (i.e., GPA seems less important than test scores, lots/no outliers ). It was also helpful for starting a conversation with the CC. As in “is this school generally open to kids like this un likely dot”, which may have been a recruited athlete or the kid who won some international violin competition. And mostly, it was helpful in demonstrating that the colleges understood that grades were lower at our school than what are generally reported here on CC.
Based on the handful of people I know who work in admissions, I don’t think that yield protection is quite as important to the schools in the process as we as applicants think it is. They admit students they want and who they think want to be there. They may put a highly qualified student on the WL if they don’t think they’re likely to come, and then if the student expresses real interest, they have a good shot at admission off the WL (assuming the school goes to its WL). You can spot that trend on Naviance, btw.
I say all of this with the caveat that different schools populate Naviance differently, so depending on how that’s done, YMMV.
gardenstate, thanks very much for the reply. You are a great resource!
After reading your post, I went back into Naviance to take a look at some of the areas you mentioned. Refocusing on some of your suggestions was helpful. For example, it looks like GPA has been at least as important as test scores as a general proposition (although as with any generality, not air-tight or particularly predicative as to any particular college). That makes some intuitive sense, as more selective colleges may be interested primarily or exclusively in the very highest achievers at a school without a deep track record (as against students who come from schools with large proportions of competitive students who battle one another for top grades and push down the GPA distribution even for very strong students). In an extremely unscientific sampling, I’d say more kids at my D’s high school with higher GPA/a little lower test scores were admitted at more selective schools than those with a little lower GPA but a little higher test scores.
As you suggest, from looking at the scattergrams of a number of schools where GPA/ACT are plotted as against admissions, waitlisted, and denials, there appear to be some schools that will admit a good number of candidates with a relatively broad range of GPA/score combos, and some schools that have not admitted any of the 7-10 kids who have applied over the last 4-5 years even though some come with strong GPA/test score combos relative to the college’s “average” admission GPA/scores. Tough to discern how much that relates to perceptions of the high school, the attitudes of particular AOs assigned the region, the strength of the rest of those applicants’ submissions, etc. As to yield, there are certainly schools it appears who continue to admit applicants even though no one has attended, so as you suggest that’s also a tough variable to tease out of the data…
I had not thought about particular AOs at a given college being assigned particular regions/schools and perhaps building a familiarity and reference points over a period of years. The school itself kind of has a story to tell in terms of its trajectory, and it would be nice that maybe an AO at a particular college assigned to the region might have some continuity of contact and already be generally aware of the high school’s past and present. That makes sense and is helpful.
And thanks for the takeaway in terms of Naviance being something that can be used to start a conversation with a college and the high school counselor as to trends, outliers, etc. That makes great sense as the primary use of the data sets.
Overall, it’s a pretty neat resource in all the admissions/deadlines/links/data/comparison tools on it. Thanks again for the reply and help!
It might be a mark on the school’s quality or even the relationship between the school and college. My high school used Naviance. GC mentioned that we used to have great acceptance numbers to a specific top 20 school but then two students went there, failed out and suffered serious mental health issues and the number of accepted applicants to this school has drastically decreased despite the high school having great numbers for much better schools and equally ranked schools. Our GC believed that her relationships with school adcoms and prior student performance influenced the positive or negative view of the school. If a high school regularly sends quite a few kids to certain colleges then those colleges will have context for that school.
“Our GC believed that her relationships with school adcoms and prior student performance influenced the positive or negative view of the school. If a high school regularly sends quite a few kids to certain colleges then those colleges will have context for that school.”
QFT! This is exactly what is going on – and has been going on for a long time. The difference is that with Naviance an applicant can now see these preferences in the data.