<p>My daughter just completed her junior year at a top ranked public high school in Northern California. Like so many others, after a quick recharge, her focus shifts to a summer program, college apps and which colleges she'll apply to. She has an excellent GPA, ACT score, AP/Honors load and ECs. How's this for a bold prediction: I sense shell get into some very good schools, and, of course, shell get denied by a chunk of uber reach schools. Weve toured 15+ schools - and she's eliminated only a couple and really likes most everything she's seen. So, of course, a key next step is determining the list of uber reach/reasonable reach/match/safety schools. Weve worked with a well regarded college counselor since her freshman year and of course she'll have a lot of input in the next phase. So that's the long winded background. My Ds high school administration/counselors are strong proponents of Naviance. Further, many (not all) recent/former grads - said it helped them determine reasonable reaches, matches and safety schools. They especially touted its ability to help them narrow down their initial target list (early in the process) based on criteria like size, location, majors offered, likelihood of acceptance. I have a couple questions about Naviance that some of you might be able to answer - as our high school and the counseling department are closed for the summer. </p>
<p>Accuracy of acceptees from our high school and subsequent reporting: As we understand it, when using Naviance and selecting an individual college, the scattergram plots which kids (anonymously) from your high school were accepted/denied to the school your searching based on their GPA/test scores. Obviously that's as good a predictor as anything else (IMO). My question, how do you know if ALL kids report their acceptance/denials to all the schools they applied to? In other words how accurate is the data youre working from? If some kids report and some dont, its somewhat helpful. However, if Naviance has 100% of the high schools kids decision data, that would appear to be an very strong predictor of future outcome. Question: is it up to the student to report where they were accepted/denied...or is the colleges decision sent directly to the high school and thus the counseling department loads student data into Naviance based on what the colleges tell them? Is it different by high school?</p>
<p>Data updates in Naviance: My daughter and her friends who just completed their junior year say they havent really looked at Naviance in a year because they say the information is so dated - Naviance currently only has their PSAT scores and sophomore grades. I assume its up to the high school college counselors to update scores and grades? Can kids update their data directly into Naviance? </p>
<p>For the experienced people on this site, what are your general observations about Naviance? Also, how much value to do you put into the predictability of how recent grads at our school have fared at college X or Y in projecting how your kid will do (taking into account all the obvious disclaimers every year is different, etc.)?</p>