Parents of the HS Class of 2022

Some parents at our rigorous high school were quite emphatic that they felt misled by the Naviance scattergrams and thought their kids should have been admitted at schools where they were rejected. I did not pay much attention to it based on their comments but think it does not show many variables, such as legacy, race, athletes,etc. My high stats kid was deferred EA and then denied from Michigan, but he applied to the engineering school. He kind of regretted not applying for a different major, but I think things worked out for the best as his college handled Covid much better and he decided against engineering anyway.

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For top 20 schools, the scattergrams are more helpful for the purpose the previous poster was asking about, which was how to show their D22 what a long shot her list was. Because top 20+ schools most often use holistic admissions (they have more high stats kids applying than they know what to do with), the Naviance data isn’t very helpful for admission prediction. In addition to missing hooks, it is also missing essay quality, ECs, LORs, DI, etc.

But I do love trying to find some purpose for the data since it is there. I have looked at ED/REA data only for a school and that tells a little more. (how much that college likes being first choice at your school). I have also compared the recent acceptance rate (using the bar charts) at our school vs the overall acceptance rate to get an idea if the college likes our high school. It is certainly interesting when our school’s acceptance rate is lower than their average! So there are a few ways to get creative with the data to see if an interesting pattern emerges.

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I don’t think the scattergrams are that accurate, especially collegevine. D should have been admitted everywhere based on everything from Naviance to Collegevilne and everything in between.

Common Data Sets were more useful in identifying reach/match/safeties.

As noted up thread, those scattergrams don’t take into account major, hooks, etc


A good high school guidance counselor will be more helpful in interpreting the Naviance data as well.

Yes, it’s interesting about colleges that don’t like your high school. Our public high school regularly sends kids to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, West Point, the Naval Academy, and many other top schools but no one seems to get accepted to Brown. Not sure why.

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So interesting! Our public high school is the same - we get kids into the schools you listed at a noticeably higher rate than the average - except for Brown, which is just right at the average. I would have thought Brown would have liked our students because of their liking the IB diploma but go figure. So many variables and these sample sizes are very small.

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Our HS also has certain colleges that have not admitted applicants for years. Our admissions counselor told us it’s because that school used to admit students from our HS and found that none of them attended. So basically they got tired of wasting their time. UVA is currently one of them. Our HS has a lot of “donut hole” families that are not likely going to pay OOS tuition to UVA.

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Yes, good point - you can also see yield on those bar charts (enrolled/accepted) and if your students wants a college that has yielded low from your school they should demonstrate a LOT of interest. In my D21’s case she decided to ED and that showed them they that they weren’t an Ivy back up to her! :slight_smile:

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Another example is that our school sends 10-15% of the class to UT-Austin but many outside the top 10% are going into majors other than engineering, CS and business. It’s misleading if you look at a scattergram without context.

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My concern as a parent would not be the dorms, but how is Purdue handling the extra students in labs and in the classroom? How are they handling adding extra labs and professors? Will this impact an undergrad chance at research opportunities?

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Purdue was already in the process of hiring 150+ tenured track professors for this coming year, and they have been building new labs, makers spaces, active learning centers, etc for years.

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We finally have working scattergrams on Naviance. But they don’t seem to have a lot of data. Only a couple colleges have rejections on them. And the bar chart data only has rejections for the class of 2021. Every other year shows 100% of those who applied were admitted and enrolled. Hmmm. I asked and they’re looking into it.

I also make use of the scattergrams in Niche — They have SO MANY data points! It is easier to see trends and identify admission anomalies. Since D22 is just the “average excellent student”, where she sits with regard to the Niche plots seems to give a better indication of where she stands with respect to the rest of the regular, unhooked applicant pool.

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800 AP Art students had their portfolios cancelled for including works that were not their own. Assuming this is for 2D, 3D, and Drawing combined, that’s out of about 57,000 students. So ~1.5%.

The Naviance I have access to isn’t very useful. It shows no one ever admitted to schools where I know students have enrolled over the past few years. I suspect the data isn’t useful, so students don’t update it with their actual school, so it continues to be not useful.

Though I also note that my D17’s data isn’t, and never has been, listed for her school and I validated that it was entered.

I saw the 800 on Twitter but are you sure it was only 13k students that took those tests? When you look at his post (below scroll down) of how many were graded for each of those it sounds like a lot more thab 13k, this a very small %. Great that they caught 800 but really makes you wonder how many more there were that cheated.

I also saw the original post way back in May about the AP CS kids cheating and how all of their registrations would be cancelled which is great but also feel these kids above should have all of theirs voided and these kids should be banned. It’s harsh but kids who cheat so blatantly don’t deserve college credit when there are others who did work so hard to do so.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AP_Trevor

For Early Action schools (like Purdue) how early she applies doesn’t matter as long as it is by the EA deadline which is a must. So even if she is done by September it doesn’t give her a leg up over someone who doesn’t apply until October and so for the LOR’s it doesn’t matter either. The one negative about getting in the common app so early is that if your daughter wins any awards or has anything special to report between now and when the application is due she may miss out on reporting it on her application.

Also for CS which has become the most popular and competitive by far, make sure she definitely has good safeties. With TO once again in the mix this is sure to be another uber competitive application year. Between my S15, D19 and S21 who all went into CS I have seen some huge changes in what it takes to get in and it’s crazy. It’s also very stressful but you have to just be patient. Some of these programs are bursting at the seams. It worked out well for S21 ultimately but it was pretty nerve wrecking at first.

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I don’t think it will affect the cycle overall because Purdue has had housing problems in the past but also kids can apply to live in learning communities and find out early enough that they can always not go to Purdue if they don’t get in. Pretty sure my friend’s son got into his LC before May 1. But he’s in the Honors program so maybe that’s why. Unfortunately this is happening everywhere. I’ve seen this happening at all 3 schools my kids attend. And University of Tampa told parents there’s not enough housing for freshman so they’ll have to go to apartments and I think Pomona as well. So bottom line if they don’t require kids to live on campus freshman year (which I don’t think they do) they’ll just become like many other schools where kids start gravitating towards off campus housing to begin with. Whether it’s apartments or the need for an off campus (private) dorm there.

If there are rolling admission safety schools on your D’s list that don’t require the LORs, go ahead and send those in. It makes a nice psychological different to have an early acceptance!

Purdue stopped doing rolling admissions a few years ago so there won’t be any issue waiting until all the LORs are ready. Just be sure to hit the EA deadline.

If you submit early and there is a significant award or achievement, be sure to have your student email the admissions officer with the update.

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Not sure where 13k comes from. My post says 57k, the sum of the three Art tests.

800 of the exact 57,956 is 1.3803
%, so I think my “~1.5%” was close enough.

Not sure either but it was early so I may have just misread. Anyway, no big deal. 800 is not chump change but still makes you wonder how many more out of the 57k cheated. Unfortunately that’s been one of the problems high schools and colleges have been trying to conquer during remote learning. This year with almost all schools/classes in person it will be a rude awakening for many.

More impressive however is the shout out he’s giving to the few outstanding students attaining perfect AP scores. Well done to those students!