<p>Do any of your children's schools use this? It seems to be taking high schools by storm, and has now announced a partnership with the Common Application for handling teacher and counselor recommendations.</p>
<p>My school uses it. Not practically, though. Right now we're all given a login and expected to use it. Thus, all the data on there is self-selected - only the really really bright students use it, thus skewing data incredibly.</p>
<p>S's school uses it and I love it. The counseling dept. enters all the data, so you really do get a good picture of what kids were admitted/rejected with what stats. You can go on as a guest on many school's naviance sites and check out the scattergrams.</p>
<p>Our school started using it this year. You can see where your child fits in with past applicants as far as grades and test scores BUT as some of us have learned ---that's only part of the picture. I think it's interesting to read but it can be totally misleading.</p>
<p>Daughters school uses it and generally it's fine. I agree with Andi that it's only part of the picture. However, it does serve as a guide to see where students have gone in previous years.</p>
<p>Same here in MoCo--guidance inputs data regarding which schools kids got into with what SAT scores. Somewhat helpful. Interesting to see that some schools within a 3 hour radius get absolutely no applicants from our school of 2,500.</p>
<p>Our school has it. It can be kind of depressing sometimes though...(especially when the school's full of overachievers who are only interested in top name-brand schools)</p>
<p>Although it is interesting to see the distribution of where people are applying to...very few schools west of the Mississippi seem to get any applications from us. (They're all ivy and top LAC obsessed)</p>
<p>We use it at our daughter's high school. It is fabulous. It lists,by SAT and GPA, all schools that students have applied to and notes whether they were accepted, rejected, or waitlisted by using one graph per school. I can't praise it enough. It is, however, depressing to see what the median gpa and SATs were for the better schools.</p>
<p>It's depressing, but I'm addicted to checking the scattergrams (for my dream schools to start with, then resorting to my safeties to restore my self-esteem). At our school it's counselor-moderated as well, which makes it a bit annoying when July rolls around and they haven't updated your GPA or SAT scores since first semester sophomore year, but they just added our class of 2005's acceptances/denials/waitlists, so I'm not complaining (at the moment).</p>
<p>Oh, and I assume what I have to say is fairly similar to what taxguy does, as his daughter and I attend the same school. (I checked your profile/website and recognized the last name, I don't actually know your daughter, but I know the name.)</p>
<p>GC alone at D's school is responsible for scattergram & related history info; therefore, no "skewing." (Students input only their private profiles, searches, etc., with their log-ins.) The statistical info is always up-to-date. So the scattergrams & acceptance histories have been so valuable to us for planning. Students & families forget how important the admissions history from one's own h.s. can be, in developing a safety/match/reach list. As we've esp. seen this yr., 2 "identical" records & e.c.'s from students of 2 diff. high schools may result in widely different acceptances. Reputation/track record means a lot.</p>
<p>The only thing I am beginning to notice, though, is that the last 3 yrs. have been more "extreme" in admissions (nationwide) than the 3 yrs. previous to that. Our h.s. provides a 6-yr history lumped together. I think the last 3 admission yrs. would be more helpful for the 3 admission classes coming up (including this yr's. class) than the whole 6-yr history is. I'd love a yr-by-yr breakdown, but I'd doubt we'd ever get that.</p>
<p>This was the first year my daughter's school started using Naviance. Where can I find the scattergrams?</p>
<p>scattergrams should be on the left-side navigation bar. That'll produce a pull-down menu of college choices, limited to colleges applied to by students of that h.s. (That's how our Naviance page works, anyway.)</p>
<p>Could someone please explain what this is? Is it only for certain high schools?</p>
<p>Your high school has to "subscribe" to it, but you can try to get on by plugging in random high schools. That will let you sign on as a guest and at least get a feel for the site. It is basically a database to manage the college search process. The scattergrams we are talking about here are for each college and plot the kids who applied by SAT score and GPA. The graph indicates who was admitted, rejected or waitlisted. There are no names, just the datapoints. So-you can look up Harvard and see what kids from the school applied for the last 5 years or so and who was accepted. The database also links to the college websites and contains information on deadlines etc. There are sections for the guidance counselors to leave messages for students (you have an individual log-on) and pages to enter your college search info, your references etc. It is really neat.</p>
<p>This is a service that is web based that a High School can subscribe to.
Here are some options from it's menu:</p>
<p>About College
:: college search
:: college lookup
:: college compare
:: scattergrams
:: acceptance history
:: visit schedule
:: scholarship list</p>
<p>The Scattergrams have the ability to allow the High School Guidance Office to plot a graph of prior year GPA and Sat Scores for each applicant to a college.
No individual is identified. </p>
<p>The Scattergrams have the Sat on one axis and the Gpa on the other axis.
The data points are represented by a red X for declined, a green square for accepted, a blue diamond for deffered/waitlisted and red or green diamonds for declined or accepted after a defferal/wait list.</p>
<p>The acceptances cluster in the upper right hand of the graph.
The declined cluster in the lower left hand of the graph.
The wait lists generally in the center, but not necessarily.
And there are always the exceptions. A green square (acceptance) in the middle of the field of red x's (rejections), or a blue diamond (Wait List) above and to the right of green squares (acceptances).</p>
<p>Our school lists the last three years results, to try to make it more annonymous and provide more data points.
The Scattergram for a College also lists the Average GPA and Average SAT score for admitted students from the High School.</p>
<p>The idea is to help Students and Parents get a "realistic" idea of their chances, based on the High Schools prior years results with the Colleges.</p>
<p>You would need to contact your High School's Guidance Office to get a password to access theTCCI Family Connection site for your High School, assuming the High School has signed up for the service.</p>
<p>Prior to getting this service our high school had a "results book" in the guidance office to look at. But this service makes the information much more accessable to parents. (Whether that's good or bad only time will tell. :D )</p>
<p>I like the GPA/SAT scattergrams. I refer kids who attend our local high school that are applying to college to the scatterplots for Arcardia High School, a large public high school in Southern California. Serves two purposes:</p>
<p>1--it's a dose of reality to those who are applying to reach schools when they see a scatterplot showing 42 excellent students applying to Stanford and only ONE getting in; and</p>
<p>2--it gives comfort to students to see that there are colleges out there that accept the majority of kids who have similar stats to theirs and that would probably accept them, too.</p>
<p>For those of you who are not familiar with Naviance, here is our url for out high school Naviance program:<a href="https://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=wootton%5B/url%5D">https://tcci.naviance.com/fc/signin.php?hsid=wootton</a></p>
<p>You can enter it as a "guest" on the right hand side and do a college search. Do check out each college graph option.</p>
<p>Our school uses a weighted GPA in this. Normally an A=4, B=3 points. However, honors and AP courses get an extra point. Thus an A=5 in this system. Have fun.
I should note that you shouldn't get depressed by the high GPAs and SATs seemingly required by some schools. WE have a lot of smart kids here due to having two internal magnet programs. Thus, it is a bit harder to get into top schools from here than from other high schools.</p>
<p>taxguy: Thanks so much for allowing us to see this! Even with the detailed descriptions, it was hard to imagine. Seems like a useful tool--is this something very new for most schools, are has it been around for awhile?</p>
<p>Donemom. I can't speak for other schools,but Wootton High School has had it for at least 3 years.</p>