You don’t “believe” in it, or any other resource, because none of them can account for the fact that humans do the picking:-)
College data, parchment, niche, Naviance and others can only give you a general idea. For holistic admissions, at least. For state schools that admit purely on stats, then I am guessing Navaince is accurate.
^^
Yeah, the 2 state schools are where he is deep right field and I’m counting those as slam dunks. It’s a couple of schools that are small and very selective that I’m concerned about, But those schools have a good history of accepting a decent amount of kids from his school every year. So, I’m at a 50% “belief” rate on those I guess 
Yeah, the point of this whole thread is that there are NO guarantees. But there are reasonable indicators. If he’s right on the cusp, that’s where a really great essay and clear expression of interest may tip the balance.
@RightCoaster
What @Lindagaf says is true - people do the picking. And at schools that practice 'holistic ’ admissions they are picking people not numbers. That is important to remember. So make sure your son’s personality or essence comes shining through his essays and any personal contact he has with the school.
Forget naviance, simply look at the schools common data set, it contains all of the information you need to make a reasonably accurate decision.
@labegg I’ve checked out the CDS for the 2 schools his is on the bubble and guess what, he’s in the mid range of that data too, ha! It would make me feel better if he was in one camp or the other. If he can pull up his act score by only 1 or 2 points I’d feel more confident in a positve outcome.
Unfortunately at that point nothing is guaranteed, you give it a go and if you win great and if you don’t you move on. Who knows if one or two points will be the tipping point or if a witty essay would do just as much to tip the scale. I think the lesson is you have to be happy with all of your choices because you never really are going to know which ones are going to work out and which are not. My D16 just said the other day she would like to know why her school accepted her as her stats were in the 25% range and below that for her particular program.
@labegg, obviously it’s not all about stats. My younger son got into some reaches that surprised us. I’m pretty sure he had fabulous recommendations and I thought his essays were very good. They really showed his wry sense of humor, his curiousity about the world. I’m pretty sure they were a breath of fresh air for a lot of ad coms.
@Postmodern where can one find lists of these high schools?
As an FYI one of my kids attended a definite lower-income HS and they had Naviance. There’s definitely a range.
@gardenstategal @porcupine98 @hebegebe
Isn’t the Naviance data self reported? So a student can say he or she applied to any school, got into any school, or plans to enroll in any school. There is no way to sanity check the data for a school on Naviance. Or is this the case only with the way it is setup at some schools?
At my kids’ school, the data was provided by GCs.
No @luckyparent , the school enters it from applications filed and results received.
^^^ Our Naviance says that the outcome is reported by the students under every scattergram.
I am not saying it isn’t accurate or verified, just relaying what it says.
Why would my kids’ school GC have been informed where they were accepted in the first place? Do they send notifications to both the school AND the student? It seems like that was between us and the school, and not the concern of the GC.
I think that the method of collecting and updating Naviance varies across high schools, in the same way that the fields reported on Naviance varies across high schools. I have helped a few friends navigate Naviance and was surprised to see the different modules a school can choose to use. I do not know if use of modules is fee-based.
Our HS has the students attend a homeroom in May to report college admission outcomes and then the guidance secretaries input the data. Not all students show up for homeroom, not all will bring full dedication to the task, so…definitely some inaccuracies in reporting.
Hmm, must be different at each school then. At our school, the student can enter the data. @gardenstategal So at your school, Naviance doesn’t ask the student which school they applied to and which they were admitted to, allowing them to enter this information?
At my kids’ HS the students enter it in a group with GC supervision/checking. GCs input the gpa and test scores.
@Pizzagirl, If we expect our schools to give half way decent advice to students it’s vital that they know where kids actually got accepted and rejected. In any event they need to at least know where to send the final transcripts.
@luckyparent , nope, the student can’t do that, only the college counselors. It’s used to track the status of submitted applications as well so I could log in as a parent and see whether kiddo had in fact completed applications or whether some piece was still outstanding.
That way, if a counselor left, the data stayed. I had confidence in the data. Of course there is no way of knowing who was a legacy or whether the outlier was the soccer goalie who also performed a piano concerto at Carnegie Hall, but it did normalize grades for the school. And for kids in very strong schools, whether by zip code, magnet, or selective prep schools, that matters.