@burghdad – Hit submit too early – meant to add that I would say your example of helping your kid is another type of privilege that many kids don’t have. Your child benefits from having an engaged parent who understands the admissions process and helped develop a testing plan. My child also benefits from privilege, btw. He got to take a test this month b/c I scrounged around and found a seat for him.
Engaged parents who have the time, knowledge and resources to help our kids are one type of privilege. Money to outsource this to test prep services and college counselors is another.
[edited to add I just saw that @homerdog actually made this point too. And yes, timing tests around math content is another valid point. ]
As for GPA and grade inflation, that’s where the school profile comes into play. Colleges can see what percent of students go to a four year college. Our is almost 90% in a class of 700. They can see breakdown of ACT and SAT scores. Ours shows 23% of kids who took the ACT got between a 33-36 and breaks down the lower scores with percentages too for ACT and SAT. They can see the classes for the honors track in all subjects including what APs are available. And they can see the breakdown for GPA. 3.892-4.0 is the top ten percent for us for unweighted. Weighted is 4.611-4.977 for top decile. Colleges that are doing holistic the right way can pretty much see what kind of student someone is by analyzing the transcript and the school profile and then looking up the ranking of our school.
FWIW- My kid is at a school that sends under 50% to 4 year schools, I’m lower middle class. But I know the value of planning and we set a schedule far in advance, hence SAT in the Fall and ACT in the Winter- with plans to take the better one again in the Spring. The privilege here is a “thinking ahead” parent.
But what percentage of kids have parents like you? Not many. And even if your student took and ACT and SAT by Dec, tests were cancelled starting in March so there’s no room for retake. Although some ACTs happened in the Chicago area, not that many did and it was seemingly random which ones were canceled and there was no way ahead of time to figure out which seats would be cancelled. We know already that D’s Aug SAT is cancelled because I called the high school where it’s supposed to be held. I called the principal there two weeks ago and she told me they just told CB they were cancelling. Have we received any notice from CB yet? Nope. And can’t find D another seat somewhere else. All full. So D not having a chance to sit is not for our lack of trying.
You’re right – money is only one type of privilege. Engaged parents like you (and me!) are another type. Your child, and mine, benefits from this. Many kids aren’t so fortunate and have to learn and navigate the world of postsecondary education much more on their own!
And to be clear, I’m not ‘knocking’ parental involvement. I’m just pointing out that it’s something most kids don’t have and therefore a privilege.
So, I made some inquiries on this new bar graph. For the purpose of student privacy, there are minimums, supposedly set by the high school, below which the numbers will not appear. Weird result: say the minimum is 6, there were 7 apps and 5 acceptances – the app number would display but not the acceptances, implying zero acceptances out of 7 apps.
Minimums were not applied to that data display in the past, before the Naviance update changed it into a bar graph earlier this summer. Now, nearly every top college appears to have had no acceptances from the high school because naturally the numbers are small. Not displaying small numbers renders the bar graph not only not informative, but rather misleading.
If you look at enough graphs, you can figure out what the minimum setting is for your high school. Perhaps the high school could adjust its minimum setting. (I am under the impression that Naviance doesn’t have a further update up its sleeve at this time.)
It’s helped us see where we stand ED vs RD at a lot of schools plus what is truly a safety, but there is also misleading “garbage” data on there too.
The coolest thing I ever did with it was get to compare our naviance with a few other local high schools at a long weekend sports meet. Universities definitely favor certain high schools, and it’s not really all favor one HS.
@evergreen5 well that makes sense and, wow, that’s unhelpful that the bar graphs don’t show all acceptances. That explains why most of S19’s acceptances are not there because he applied to school that aren’t super popular at his high school and he was the only one accepted.
Right. And, for us, ACT and SAT scores on Naviance are just the highest composite score a student got in one sitting. So, with so many schools superscoring (especially on the SAT), this graph is garbage. It looks like someone would get in with a 30 for example, but maybe that student actually submitted a 33. I’ve stopped even looking at the score ranges so much and now just focus on GPA and whatever I can gather from our counselor about how many legacies were accepted etc. She’s willing to share sometimes.
@evergreen5 - that makes so much sense and explains the discrepancies between schools. Thanks so much!
Edit: Looks like our school’s magic number is 4. I can’t find any acceptances/attending less than 4 for any schools (which doesn’t bode well for my daughter and Northwestern, lol)
Ours does one worse. It shows the best ACT or SAT depending on which test you have selected. So if someone takes the SAT only once freshman year and makes a 1200 but submits a 36 ACT, Naviance shows a 1200 as accepted. This gives a lot of students a false hope that holistic and a good essay can get you into MIT with a 1200.
We have Naviance and it’s not super helpful in our case for a couple of reasons. 1) Among the schools my kid is considering, several don’t have enough data points to generate a scattergram because so few students applied over the last five years. 2) Reach schools that have enough applicants aren’t particularly useful - kids with roughly same raw stats can be accepted/waitlisted/rejected. Yes, review at selective schools is holistic! 3) the admissions landscape has changed a lot over the last 5 years so the older data can skew the results. If you select for fewer years, you get back to problem #1. D’s school is relatively small and I imagine that Naviance is more predictive for larger schools.
With all of that, it is still helpful to see, for example, schools where nobody has gotten in or schools where everybody has gotten in with stats similar to my kid.
Regarding TO, test blind, etc. as others have noted above, I think that AOs will be relying more heavily on historical data and prior relationships with high schools. They will know how to interpret transcripts, teacher and guidance counselor letters, etc. from schools they have seen before. So we’re back to privilege, again. If your kid is coming from a lesser-known school that typically sends few kids to schools other than in-state public options, those AOs will have less to work with and a standardized test score will matter more.
As for me, I have the added privilege of 4-5 years on CC. When my D17 applied, the first SAT happened at the end of junior year and she decided to retest again in the fall. The uncertainty was very stressful. This time around I knew better and had D21 test earlier and she rocked it! She got lucky with the timing based on our family’s previous experience with college admissions.
Ours does that too. Super UNhelpful. Plus, here, everyone has to take an SAT to graduate and a lot of kids like the ACT better so the SAT “page” on Naviance is practically no help.
Does anyone have an opinion about using Ethan Sawyer’s “College Essay Essentials” for essay writing? My S21 and I have read Toor’s “Write Your Way In,” which is really good. I’m just wondering whether it would be overkill to try to use both. Sawyer’s book provides a step-by-step guide, but it seems more overwhelming than Toor’s book. Just don’t want to make the process more complicated than it needs to be, or to overthink it. My son is not applying to top private schools, if that makes any difference. I think he really just needs to start his Common App essay, then deal with any supplements after the main essay.
What do you all think–necessary to use both books?
@MorseLewis - Sound like you have a resource that you like and thinking 2 books could be overwhelming. I know there are short tips on The Essay’s Guy website and maybe start there to see if your son resonates more with his style. My kids only used his book and as tempted as I was to buy Write Your Way in - I didn’t, as they just need to start and I know they will figure it out. There are so many resources and it can make it feel overwhelming.
Write Your Way In has helped S21 a lot…that book coupled with the feedback and advice from our college advisor has really shaped his essay from what he’s telling me. He’s on his final edits/draft and is supposed to have it completed by Aug 18, which is his next meeting date with the counselor.
Just because that set of students may skew toward high SES schools and students does not justify ignoring and penalizing the subset of students who do not fit into those categories. Test optional seems to be the better choice to ensure that no students are penalized, imo. I get the argument that students shouldn’t feel pressured to take exams under less than ideal conditions, but test optional policies should compensate for that.
As for application plans, my D21 has limited her list to 10 schools or less, but she hasn’t finalized it yet. She’s finishing a brutal dual enrollment Physics class right now (the professor is borderline incompetent), so although she has a draft common app essay, she won’t be able to revise it until after this class is over.
@homerdog your school profile has way more information than ours does. Ours reports very basic information, How many AP’s school demographics, %that go to college…but nothing about the schools usual ACT test scores etc.