<p>I'm a Parent'10, and I'm starting to compile information on colleges that interest my son, such as where his SAT scores fit into the matriculated students profile, importance of interviews, etc. In Naviance, this information is available in a nice summary under "Admissions." It's convenient, and I think I will use it rather than combing through each college's website. Have any of you had experience with the Naviance info being out-of-date or incorrect? Please let me know. Thank you.</p>
<p>While I'm checking data, eventually I'll look at endowment to assess financial strength. Can any of you recommend a source for current information on that?</p>
<p>We always signed up for the USNews rankings and they have up to date info- itâs like 14.99 and has a few tools that we found useful as well. We were also able to rank schools using all of their methods based on the data that was important to us- like class size, and other info that they use to rank.</p>
<p>Naviance was useful to us, as was the collegeboard search which I also think is pretty up to date. My kids did all of the initial searching and once we began visiting that really helped them search as they had better ideas as to what they were looking for.</p>
<p>Naviance has improved dramatically over the past few years⊠and weâve used the U.S. News Rankings as well⊠but you might also take advantage of guides like Fiske. Numbers alone donât tell the entire story â and this can be especially true for majors like mathematics.</p>
<p>Endowments can be tricky right now. Even schools with large endowments have frozen some or all types of spending. My oldest is at Brown. Their endowment may be small when compared with Harvardâs⊠but itâs quite sizable compared to most schools. My youngest is currently trying to decide among Amherst, Wesleyan, Lafayette, and some others. Searching the school websites over the past few weeks revealed articles at Brown, Amherst & Wesleyan regarding wage & hiring freezes, etc. In other words, many schools are in similar situations depending on their debt levels. I wouldnât worry about (i.e. consider) this issue until youâre actually ready to select a school to attend. But the school websites may be the best place to find news releases.</p>
<p>I LOATHE Naviance. First of all, its accuracy can only be measured by the accuracy of the information placed in the system by your schoolâs guidance department. My Dâs GPA had been miscalculated by nearly a point, and it took us a good four months to get the schoolâs administrator to change it. Meanwhile, the old GPA appeared on Naviance, which made it look as if she was ineligible for many schools which actually would have been a good fit for her. Second, the scattergrams only measure the stats of the kids in YOUR school who applied to a particular school as opposed to nationwide stats. If kids at the top of the class apply to a particular school as a âsafetyâ, itâs going to bump up the average GPA/SAT/ACT scores, making it seem as if your child doesnât have a shot when, in fact, he very well might have an excellent chance at acceptance. My Dâs GC tried to scare her away from applying two colleges based on the Naviance scattergrams. She was accepted at both schools, one of which gave her a very nice merit scholarship. Caveat emptor.</p>
<p>^^ Thank you tranuil for that warning, and congratulations to your D on her acceptances. I now donât feel bad about not having my own Naviance password.</p>
<p>Isnât that exactly what makes it useful (assuming your GC keeps the data accurate and up-to-date)?</p>
<p>You can look up national stats in the published rankings or in the schoolâs Common Data Set documentation. The Naviance data can give a clearer picture of how applications from your school fare in the outcomes.</p>
<p>For instance, my kid applied to a school that shares a religious affiliation in common with our private HS. We might have assumed that would give a leg up. A quick look at the Naviance data quickly disabused us of that notion.</p>
<p>We found Naviance to be fairly accurate, however its one major shortcoming was that with a class of just over 100 students, results could be skewed by a successful applicant who was a legacy, athlete or simply very wealthy. All of those seemed to trump academics in many cases.</p>
<p>I canât comment on Naviance accuracy, but it hasnât been very helpful for us. The reason is that D is at a relatively small HS, and she is applying to colleges far away. So for her college choices, things like scattergrams always come up as ânot enough data to plotâ. Or something like that. </p>
<p>If she were applying to schools here in state, it would be a different story.</p>
<p>Maybe, maybe not. Case in point: Fordham is considered a âsafetyâ at my Dâs school due to its longstanding affiliation with the university. There are quite a few kids who are Ivy bound but apply there EA. Their GPAs and standardized test scores inflate the scattergrams upward, making some students believe that their lower stats are insufficient to get them into Fordham, which is far from true.</p>
<p>Iâm not a parent, but as Puzzled88 said, when you see those two kids with 1750 SAT scores and 3.2 GPAs who got into Stanford or something, you really start to wish they were âlabeledâ with their hook (assuming they must have one)âŠalso, since I go to a small school, when you have one kid with really low scores/GPA (maybe an athlete), it throws off the averages and makes your chances at getting in look better. </p>
<p>And while one might be able to see that the people with really low scores/GPAs are exceptions and had some sort of hook, when you start getting into 3.7 GPA and 1980 SAT score, itâs a lot harder to tell all of the sudden. </p>
<p>The last problem I have with Naviance, which is just for my school, is that on the scattergrams for UCs, it uses the GPA our school calculates, which is radically different from UC GPAs. Therefore, you donât know how many APs, etc. the students took, which factors into the weighted UC GPAs. </p>
<p>Naviance is helpful, but it has its shortcomings, especially at a small school.</p>
<p>Itâs always a good idea to check the most recent Common Data Set of the college - sometimes the various college selection websites (including Naviance) are a little out of date.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information! I like the Naviance scattergrams, but I am discounting them a little for hooked candidates. The other part that makes it difficult to interpret is that his school does not weigh gpa. As a result, I donât know how many APs or honors courses were included in a college with a high average gpa from his school. Iâm depending on his GCâs interpretation. I had not considered the possibility that some colleges would be back-ups, and that this raises the average gpa of acceptances.</p>
<p>I think the usefulness of Naviance depends on the school. If you are coming from a small school, with limited data, Naviance will not be of great help. It will not be a great indicator, since maybe some genius set the bar as the only accepted student or maybe there was an athlete that lowered the average SAT significantly. However, these should be ironed out as the sample size increases (basic statistics). If you were to come from a large high school with lets say 800 students graduating, it will give you a good picture.</p>
<p>I like Naviance, it does help that we come from a large school. You have to use some sense when reading the scattergrams. So for example. S1 was a legacy and I could figure his chance might well be a little better than what Naviance indicated (which was a 50/50 chance at a school with <10% admissions rate) - he got in. Stanford data showed two acceptances in the middle of a sea of red xâs. I figured those two kids had a special in. I asked around - and indeed they did - athletes, URMs AND legacies. I figured son had very low chance even lower than more general sites would suggest. Son did not get in. Binghamton and Fordhma are popular safeties at our schools. The green circles extend down to the B students and the 1200/1600 SAT scores. So you donât look at the average score of acceptance - you look at the range. There are schools where we do better than the college board type sites suggest, and schools where we do worse. I think thatâs helpful info. My son applied to Stanford anyway, but he knew better than to get his hopes up.</p>
<p>A lot of it depends on the school in question and who was accepted and denied. If there are only a few applicants and admitees then of course it will be skewed, but for larger schools Naviance is usually very good.</p>
<p>I liked Naviance, but you canât just look at the averages, you HAVE to look at the scattergrams. For example, University of Colorado, Boulder is a common school that the GCs recommend at our school as a safety. This means that the average accepted GPA is a 3.3; if your kid had a 3.1 and you just looked at averages, you might think it was a reach, but if you look at the scattergrams you realize no with over a 2.9 has EVER been rejected from our school. So, if you really look at the numbers closely, they can be very helpful. Still, when the sample size is too small, or your kid has a particular hook, or the top tier of the scattergram looks just plain arbitrary such as at the Ivys (why did those 5 kids with the 4.5s get rejected and that one with the 4.3 get accepted?) accept that the numbers can only tell you so much, give your kid the benefit of the doubt, and step off the cliff!</p>