<p>I've been posting here since Dec, lurking longer than that, my d is already packing up to leave, but I still don't know what Naviance is? Is it something all schools participate in and if so how do you access it? Anyone know if LA Unified is part of it?</p>
<p>Naviance is a program that tracks your high school’s “track record.” It shows which students were accepted into what college with what stats. At least for my high school, it showed their SAT and GPA. It is not exactly useful because it leaves out a big chunk: essays, interview, extra-curricular, but gives a decent basis to see where you stand. All data is school-collected, so you would have to ask your counselor to see if they participate in it or not. Plus you need some login information to access the site itself, which differs per school.</p>
<p>It also includes a document management system for counselors to track if everything is going out the door on time</p>
<p>It includes a talent or abiliity analysis program - of the what color is your parachute variety, which helps students narrow down a potential major</p>
<p>It includes historical metriculation data, showing by college how many applied, were accepted, waitlisted, waitlisted/no, and waitlisted/yes. With average SAT and GPA from your school. </p>
<p>The 2004 to 2008 data presented in Scattergrams from D’s school , show 11 acceptance from 83 applications - but 31 waitlisted student of who ZERO received a spot. IE extremely low probability of getting into Washington U of of waitlist</p>
<p>Or Dartmouth - where acceptance are widely scatterd by GPA and SAT, making conclusion or trends hard to identify - other then Dartmouth does not follow a hard and fast GPA/SAT formula in admissions.</p>
<p>the scattergrams are crack cocaine for the data-driven parent</p>
<p>LOL Dad’o’2. Too true. Too true.</p>
<p>Despite the fact that scattergrams only show the number part of the equation you can still infer a lot from them. The only two applicants accepted to Stanford had middling stats (and much lower than their published average)? May mean that only underrepresented minorities and athletes have been accepted from our school. (Three years later still true, sigh. We don’t have any trouble with acceptances to the usual suspects on the East Coast.) No one under xxx SAT ever accepted? Consider it a super reach if it stays on the list at all. It will also suggest a list of match schools based on your interests and scores.</p>
<p>You are oh so right, D. </p>
<p>I am thankful for Naviance though. It enabled us to figure out our daughter’s reaches, targets and safeties on our own.</p>
<p>I think Naviance is highly useful.</p>
<p>It will certainly give you a better handle on your student’s chances than acceptance stats based on the general population.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why others scorn it so.</p>
<p>I discovered Naviance a few months ago and I must confess I look at it almost every day … same schools … over and over!!! Some parents and kids actually LIE (oh the horror) about where their kid got accepted or what their stats are. Naviance takes all the b.s. out of the equation. Some people insist that you had to have a certain GPA or cannot get into a certain University if your SAT is below X. Well, I can go to Naviance and see the REAL story, no b.s. My son was told by his guidance counselor he had almost no chance of getting into a certain school and tried to get him to set his sights lower, but on Naviance, it shows kids with similar GPAs and SATs ARE from his very same high school ARE getting into that school. It gave us a lot of hope!</p>
<p>FYI, Naviance-happy parents, the school can track how often you’re on it! ;)</p>
<p>Uh - oh. Now I have given my son’s high school one MORE reason to think I am a total lunatic!</p>
<p>
Same here. It’s not such a bad thing though!</p>
<p>I remember last year listening to my D’s GC and he said that he could track who is on it and he said that one person in particular should get a life. I KNOW he was talking about me - but on the other hand, my D went 9 for 10 for her schools with tons of merit offers!</p>
<p>I checked Naviance for our school, and LAUSD unfortunately does not subscribe/participate in the service.</p>
<p>Interesting but potentially very misleading. And the fact that it has trailing 5 years worth of data makes every place seem easier to get into, since year -5 was so much less competitive than year -1. Also, if you are unhooked, non-urm, non-athlete, then once again, your stats will need to be better than what Naviance tells you.</p>
<p>
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<p>The stats of a hooked, urm or athlete will appear as an outlier.</p>
<p>In other words, you will see a cluster of denied applicants with approximately the same stats, with one or two accepted within the cluster. One can GUESS (although it would be impossible to know for sure) that the reason why this one applicant was accepted was due to being hooked/urm/athlete etc.</p>
<p>As for past years of “easier” admittance being mixed in with later years of “more difficult” admittance, there will of course be a trend requiring better stats for subsequent years, but if the college knows your high school, I would suggest that there will not be a huge jump from one year to the next in terms of the basic stats needed to be considered for acceptance.</p>
<p>Naviance provides good ballpark information – if your student’s stats would have been marginal for acceptance at a given school for past years of Naviance data, then they probably are for this year as well, and if, according to Naviance, your student would have been a shoo in, the student probably stands a reasonably chance of acceptance this year as well.</p>
<p>Obviously the data is better if there has been a large pool of applicants to date.</p>
<p>Another more cautionary note is acceptances to universities with a variety of programs, some more competitive than others. For example, if your student is applying to the Tisch School at NYU, the overall stats for acceptance to NYU will not tell you much about the odds of getting into the highly selective Tisch.</p>
<p>cpeltz, it’s a school-by-school decision. At least it is in my district.</p>
<p>Very little in LA Unified is school by school when it comes to spending big bucks! Frankly, most of the LA high schools are just trying to keep the hs graduation rate above 50% vs. tracking where all the grads are getting into schools. The individual college office/guidance will vary greatly school to school.</p>
<p>I don’t know of any urban public schools that have paid the price for Naviance.</p>
<p>Those scattergrams sure are fun, though.</p>
<p>A few more issues with Naviance: It tells you lots about the colleges “everyone” applies to from a particular school, but not about less popular colleges. At some smaller schools, Naviance may not even present what data there is on less popular colleges, because of privacy concerns. (When only one student has been accepted at X College in the past three years, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what her stats were if Naviance shows the data.) And fendrock’s statement that URMs, athletes, etc. will show up as outliers can produce false negatives. Sure, the outliers on a scattergram usually have some other hook, but with the ultraselective colleges lots of the non-outlier kids do, too, and that may have been important in their success.</p>
<p>Ds’s urban public did.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon is another school for which you need to be careful with the data. My son’s year two kids applied. He did with top stats to the School of Computer Science and someone else with much lower stats went to the Music school. I tend to assume that all outliers brought something extra to the table and view the results a little cautiously.</p>