@messifan I know I should be able to figure this out but my brain is full…
@ youngbeck- I had a friend of mine with an older student show me how to use naviance. I had no idea that the graphs were there initially. Those really can help your family come up with a decent list of schools reach, matches and safeties. Our naviance data goes back 10years and you cannot change it anyway. Many schools in the last 2-3 years have become much more competitive so just be aware of that when comparing your child’s scores. We also used collegedata, Niche and I paid for the USN&WR upgrade to compare colleges.
Chiming in here! Our school’s Naviance goes back 5 years, so the data is relatively recent. It only covers info about students from our HS who have applied at various colleges, not the entire pool of applicants. Our system also has a section for “overlaps,” meaning students who applied to school “A” tended to also apply at schools “B, C & D.”
Another great source to starting coming up with a list of possible schools is to use Niche.com. Once I found a few schools that my S was interested in, we used Niche.com to find other similar schools. There is a ist on the right side of the home page for each school, AND they their student reviews provide some interesting insights. https://niche.com/
But if you really want to dig into data about schools, the best source is right from the college or univ itself. I have found the best source for stats on acceptance rates, admissions stats of accepted students and financial aid, is in the Common Data Set, for each school. This is where Princeton review and others websites get their statistics. Just Google “Name of the School Common Data Set 2015” and start paging through the information. Each school completes a Common Data Set every year. 2015 is the most recent ones you can find.
You can also use Collage Navigator to compare statistics, and it looks like they’ve finally updated to the 2015-16 school year. http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
I am going to shamelessly use my own thread to ask for help. D would love opinions: U Roch, Dickinson, Kenyon. She has ten days to decide. Primarily interested in Psych, Eng and Art. Wants kids who aren’t too nerdy, but not too into partying, and engaged profs. Money is always relevant, but not top criterion.
It sounds like the major+two clusters curriculum at Rochester would fit her interests well. Have you looked at the strength of the career placement office at each school?
Kenyon is excellent for those three subjects. Students fit those criteria- parties are mostly small, there are sororities & fraternities but the frat guys I know love watching Mamma Mia & making milkshakes, not your typical big school frats.
I just realized that at Rochester she could double major in Eng and Psych and minor in Art without breaking a sweat. That’s the benefit of the open curric.
Great thread, Lindegraf! I totally agree with everything you said. My daughter is at Brown, and I’m almost positive it is because of a huge hook - Intel Science Semifinalist - from a summer research program experience - HSHSP at MSU. Not really planned or schemed at all, just happened really. But I know that and am being much more realistic with my younger daughter. Not getting her hopes up for any reach schools. Pushing Carleton, Hendrix, Grinnell, all with family connections. Those are reach enough…
@ciervo , yes, and have spoken to all. Kenyon has the more “interesting” recruiters.
I think a reality that doesn’t hit a lot of high schoolers is just how run of the mill kids with 2200+ SATs and 3.9+ GPAS are. When you’re the academic rock star of your high school, even if you have nothing “special” about you, it’s easy to think that you’re easily Ivy caliber (or similarly ranked universities). I was one of those boring academic rockstars, and I remember being floored in March of my senior year when I was rejected from every top 30 university I applied to. It wasn’t till I got to April of my senior year and the gap year that followed that I realized just how many rock stars there are out there. My gap year certainly made me a more interesting candidate but I was still shocked when I was accepted to Tufts in December. I would say, realistically speaking, that any acceptance to a university with a sub 30 percent acceptance rate should be treated as a major victory regardless of someone’s level of academic achievement! The Ivies are not the be-all end all, and neither are the top LACs.
Congrats to your daughter on Kenyon! Really, really interesting school IMO.
@Qwerty568 , I really love your post. Thanks so much for sharing your experience. BTW, a few people have asked me, because I never posted my D’s stats. Her SAT was 760-720-760, which is very respectable. She did two SAT subject tests, got over 700 on both. Her GPA was a “weak” point, at 3.75. She has 7 APs and lots of H courses on her transcript and three 5s on her APs so far. She also did a comp sci course for college credit. Her most significant EC is violin and she participated in music festivals for many years. She has a common assortment of ECs and volunteer stuff.
And yes, she has chosen Kenyon and is really happy about the decision:-)
Yay Kenyon! Isn’t it sad that we have to think of these kids as average? My kid has 400 kids in his class, he is barely top 10%…with a 95. Just at his school!
It was a tough year! Glad it’s all over (but the check writing of course!!)
Perhaps more high schoolers should look at the info about their test scores which is put out by the college board rather than making assumptions. Your 2200 on the SAT puts roughly 20,000 students who took the SAT above you, not to mention guestimating another 10,000 who took the ACT but not the SAT. Why would you think that is going to wow a top school?
Because not enough people understand the math. Seriously.
I honestly think a lot of people see “the average score for an accepted student at school X is Y” and read “a student with score Y will get accepted to school X”
@mathyone this post is about lessons learned. No need to be snarky. And in fact, for that SAT, it put her in the 99th percentile. On paper, as I stated in the original post, it fit the stats of lots of colleges.
Reread my original post, because I clearly state that it took me a while to understand the reality, and if you want to scroll through the many pages on this post, you will see this is true for a lot of people.
In my experience, I’m a current high school senior, I always knew that I was a pretty average kid but never let it limit my options. I had about 96 UW GPA and a 98.5 W GPA and was 39/350 9 in my class. One thing I did have was a 35 on the ACT but I knew that was pretty common for many top applicants. What I did have was EC’s I was the captain of three different varsity teams, President of Science Olympiad, and worked in a research internship over the summer along with about 100 volunteer hours. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel a little discouraged at time when applying, but kept going. I got into every school I applied to, which shocked me to say the least. After all my decisions I was choosing between Cornell, JHU, UNC-Chapel Hill, and a BS/MD program. I chose the BS/MD program and feel really happy with my decision. So my advice to everybody is just to never limit your options cause you feel like you never have a chance, put a little faith in your self 
Congratlations! Would you be willing to share the BS/MD program you were admitted to?
Yes! With all the honors / AP classes they are taking, they should at least be aware of the basic stats surrounding percentiles - one would think…
That is not the point. Yes, there are 20k kids with their score, but there is little difference in a 2200 and 2400 at that level…that just means 20k kids are “qualified”. It is about something less tangible than math (which oddly is intangible!)
@Undecided3494 If you’re an example of “average” then I’m at a loss for words.
@Lindagaf With your daughter’s stats I’m surprised that she didn’t get into the couple of schools that waitlisted her. Maybe it came down to them not needing a violinist, but needing a flutist or cello player. It scares me when I read about kids who have everything that you would think you need to get into a top school, but don’t because of some random/unknown reason. Her test scores were amazing.