My kid’s private school has accurate data in Naviance for the last four or five years. I notice that some Colleges that are generally considered very selective are pretty easy to get into from his school while some less selective colleges don’t admit many kids at all from his school.
So as he builds a list of schools should he use the Naviance data or the publicly available data to decide what is a safety/match/reach?
Be careful with both data in that many schools have different admission buckets by major, in-state vs. out-of-state, etc… There may also be characteristics of applicants from your high school that are particularly favorable or unfavorable at specific colleges; these characteristics may or may not apply to your kid. Also, be careful of Naviance data that is more than a few years old.
If you want to be conservative, make the assessment on the basis of whichever data indicates that it is more difficult to get into, unless there is a stated automatic admission or scholarship criterion from the school (in which case, it can be a safety if the student qualifies for the automatic admission or scholarship and the school is affordable).
If there is enough Naviance data, it can have additional value in giving you an idea of the profile of rejected students at each college, as well as the profile of admitted students.
Also, look at the scattergrams. you will probably see several kids with lower score accepted each year…athletes, hooks. Unless you have a hook, you have to eliminate them from your research. I looked into this after my son told me 2 kids with lower stats committed to a certain Ivy as athletes. 2 out of 5 acceptances…at least:(
I think that Naviance might be more reliable, but only if interpreted properly. In order to protect individual students’ privacy, they will not post admission results for small colleges where only one or two students have applied. My kids’ school did not use any weighting system for Naviance, either, so we couldn’t know how the results might have broken down for fellow IB students. It was helpful, nevertheless. I feel that aggregate data sets for large, multi-faculty, universities - and especially public ones - are almost meaningless for individual “chances.” An in-state applicant who is an all-star athlete applying to a less selective program will be included in the same aggregate as students admitted to the most elite Engineering and Computer Science departments. SAT Math scores for students accepted at NYU/Stern will be quite different from those admitted to the Musical Theater program at Tisch. Being “in range” overall for some universities is meaningless when it comes to admission to specific divisions.
As long as Naviance has a lot of data from previous years, it is definitely the way to go. Certain high schools are much more rigorous and challenging than others so GPA is definitely not a standard. As far as SAT scores go, you can pretty much understand if your in the range by using public data.
Thanks everyone. All very helpful.
One LAC’s scattergram has a clear fields of accepted/waitlisted/rejected students. If he falls comfortably in the accepted field would we consider that a “match” even if the school is considered very selective?
Because both ACT and SATs scores are charted, the scattergrams can be a little misleading. Example: Student takes the SAT and gets a 2000, then takes the ACT and gets a 33. Student sends the SAT only to schools requiring all test results; for most apps, they only submit their ACT score. However, their admit/defer/reject results show up “tied” to both scores. So the scattergram will show an acceptance to say, Northeastern, with SAT score of 2000 – but Northeastern never even saw that SAT score and admitted based on the 33 ACT.
Also, the SAT is charted as a superscore but the ACT is not – which can be misleading for schools that superscore the ACT. Example: Students takes ACT twice, gets 31 composite both times, but superscore is a 33. Student applies to and is accepted at, say, Wash U. Naviance shows acceptance with ACT score of 31, whereas Wash U considered that applicant as a 33.
Both of these situations produce “outliers.” Often this is a minor issue but it can be magnified for colleges that don’t get a lot of applicants from your school. Overall, though, it’s a useful tool.
Something else to consider is whether early applications (ED, EA, or early rolling) are common from your high school to the college in question. If they are, a later applicant (RD or late rolling) applicant may have worse chances than Naviance indicates if most of those listed in Naviance were early applicants.
Our school’s Naviance indicates which applications were EA/ED/RD on the scattergram. But I get your point. It feels like reading tea leaves.
I used both.