Probably the same way they toggle EA RD etc… Use colors.
Yes, 100%–and those scatterplots were very accurate for D21: got in to all her safeties &matches, one low reach and one reach. CC wisdom would have called some of the matches reaches but they were not based on GC advice and scattergrams for the school.
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And it’s interesting to see which schools admit nearly everyone from your HS because they like the school’s results and/or because you might be full pay.
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I agree: the full payers probably have an advantage since Covid as a way of covering costs. Wonder if that statistic is viewable anywhere for her HS?
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We’ve got SCOIR at our school. It seems most helpful for the schools where many, many kids apply (in our case UMASS, BU, Northeastern etc) in order to get a sense of what type of kids they are accepting in terms of grades & test scores. For less popular schools it is much less useful since they have so little (if any) data to look at. Regarding LOR - our school suggests asking teachers in May of junior year.
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Great information! Thank you all for explaining it so clearly. I’ve learned a lot, but as S22 is my oldest it’s kind of a mess in my head still. Lol. I was talking with my friend today and she is just starting to talk about college with her son and I am going to pass some of this on to her tomorrow too.
I followed the steps @smiles2122 outlined and all the colleges I select say " There is not enough data available to display the scattergram with the current settings." I picked a few that I know a lot of kids apply to and attend, so it seems like maybe our school doesn’t subscribe to this portion of Naviance. There is a bar chart showing application history, but I don’t think it’s accurate at all, since in years 2013-2018 100% of kids who applied were accepted and attended - for every school I looked at! Lol. Something is off there.
I think I will have S22 ask for letters of recommendation in May. And I’ll have him ask someone how it gets submitted. I don’t know and he doesn’t either. I imagine the teachers are pros at it though. Last year he asked 2 teachers for recommendations for summer camps and one never came through. The other did, but missed his first deadline by 2 weeks. He had given about a month’s notice in February, so we thought that would be okay. Hopefully college letters are more smooth.
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He could ask his Guidance Counselor what Naviance is supposed to show and also see if they provide support on the submissions of recommendations. In September of senior year our counselors explained to the students how recommendation requests work as well as transcript requests and other application logistics.
I am sorry to hear that about the recommendation! Teachers generally take these college recommendations very seriously but your son may want to confirm that with his counselor, as well.
D22 is planning to ask a STEM teacher and a social science teacher for her recommendations. She already has a STEM teacher in mind. But for social science, she is torn between her APUSH teacher from Junior year and her AP Euro teacher from sophomore year. Her entire Junior year has been online. While she is doing well in her APUSH class and the teacher likes her, she feels her sophomore AP Euro teacher knows her much better and can write a more personal LOR. Her school counselor recommends students to get LOR from Junior year teachers as that’s been the practice but she did say colleges could change their minds given the unusual year and stay tuned for future updates. Anyone else planning to ask a sophomore year teacher for a LOR? or should we ask a Junior year teacher as that has been the practice?
My sons’ HS did not use Naviance but my daughter’s did. The scattergram data of what GPA level got into what schools was interesting, but of little value because one never knew what other aspects of a past student’s profile got them into that school. That 3.7 UW GPA kid who graduated from your HS and got into your top 20 target college may have written a published piece of poetry or conducted impressive STEM research, that you don’t know about and is not evident on Naviance. Also, admissions at the colleges sometimes changed pretty drastically from year to year.
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Agree with that, though if there are enough points, you can garner general trends in scores and grades specific to the school. For example, looking at D’s HS data for Tufts shows a mixed bag - spotty acceptances even with high scores, many deferrals — data that mimics published admissions numbers for Tufts. But for Bryn Mawr, pretty much every dot is an acceptance, suggesting a much higher admission rate than published (and yes, that D’s HS may be considered a feeder school).
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@stepclap I recommend asking at least 3 teachers. Some colleges may ask for 3. Brown University asked my son for three. I was a recommender for a transfer student and in common app, you upload the recommendation one time as a recommender if you write a non-school specific letter. The student’s interface then allows them to select which ones among their recommenders they want to submit once the LOR is uploaded. For some schools, my son submitted letters from all three. For others, just his AP Lang teacher and his Bio/AP Bio teacher.
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Oh yes, bumping into both of those data challenges - the age of the data and the missing hook, etc information - certainly makes interpreting a challenge. Per @songbirdmama, we looked for places where patterns could potentially emerge and there were some that were helpful. Either large enough sets or consistent enough data points could tell at least a piece of a story. And we understood that out-of-pattern lower stats likely belied a hook of some sort.
Frankly, I think the first important function of the data is to show students with high stats that a lot of students still get rejected at that level - that high stats aren’t necessarily sufficient. That was important for my kids to see. And then I like seeing the ED data to show which schools particularly seem to like these self selecting students. My D21 applied to a school that has had no ED rejections at our school - of course knowing me I was still nervous, haha, but it was still good to know she was going after something that was at least realistic.
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Our public high school has 10 school counselors for roughly 2800 students. The school counselors do a group Career Planning event one night of the school year for each grade. This is recorded and posted to the school counselors page on Facebook.
When my oldest (college class of 23) was applying to colleges, it was on a totally different time frame as she was applying to theatre arts programs. The school counselor was great in getting recommendations in and transcripts posted so applications could all be submitted by mid-September. She really helped us with this somewhat chaotic process!
We primarily used Naviance for the Scattergrams. In our case, we have students with great test scores as compared to fair-to-middling GPAs. The Scattergrams helped us with that.
Does anyone here know how to send scores from the school-day SAT my son took a week ago? He didn’t have time to review/study so wanted to take it and see how he felt before sending them. In the past, there was always the option to send within 9 days of taking it. I even called College Board before he took the test to verify it was doable and I was assured he could. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to send them. I can only send scores from Aug and Nov and at a cost. The $12 won’t break us but it would be nice to use some of the free sends!
I’m planning to call tomorrow morning if I can’t figure it out before.
Hi, if the fee isn’t a hardship, I would consider holding off on sending them before you see them this year since so many schools will be test optional. You may want to decide later as part of his overall application strategy whether to send them or not to various schools on his list.
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We want to send it to National Merit Corp. If it’s not high enough, we’ll send another.
I called this morning to ask and as I was on hold, I logged in as him and there was the option to send for free. Just like I remembered from when he took it in the fall! It wasn’t there yesterday, so I guess our timing was just off.
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You are my new best friend! You saying this (which makes great sense, by the way, clearly you know what you are doing) reminded me about alternate entry, which my son signed up for also because he couldn’t get PSAT scores. He was going to try to use the April school one but the proctor messed a bunch of things up, including taking away all the kids’ watches which are approved and recommended by College Board (only smart watches aren’t allowed so she messed that up). So he thinks he did badly because there was no clock within view, etc and he had practiced pacing with the watch. So your post just reminded me that the deadline for alternate entry is June but he can’t take the June test because ARML (math competition) is that day. But I looked and there is a May date! So he signed up for that one. You know, we post random things on here and who knows who or how they help. Thank you!
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Glad to help! I’m glad there is a May test to take. I hope he does awesome!
They made my son take off his $12 Timex digital watch too. He did have a clock, but they said “nothing electronic” was allowed.
In 9th grade, the info that was sent home said only “4-function” calculators were allowed on the PSAT. I had to email the counselors with the link to approved calculators. Clearly the information isn’t being read well at the school!
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RE: watch That’s crazy! That’s something lots of people recommend - that you have an analog watch to keep track of your time incase there’s not a clock or you’re not facing a clock.
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Thank you - such a bummer this happened to your son, too! Ok, for his May sitting I am going to have him bring in a print out of the SAT instructions that say these watches are allowed (and recommended!).