<p>Really not trying to be hostile, but there are definitely other possible explanations. You don’t seem to interested in entertaining them… Our school is also one that does not have completely accurate info on Naviance (I can tell by looking at my own kids’ data, including one that graduated from HS 5 years ago and some of her info was never completed/corrected).</p>
<p>My son’s high school had a quite a number of bad data points in its selection of elite schools, which made it impossible for him to estimate his chances before applying; some of the acceptances showed stats below that needed for the state flagship. After he was accepted at Brown, his counselor told him he was the only student in living memory from his high school to be accepted there – yet Naviance showed two applicants were accepted to Brown that year. His counselor tried to track down the ghost and was unsuccessful.</p>
<p>Why does a simple question illicit such responses? Yale mom asked a simple question, she wasn’t inviting a lecture or opinions about her motivations or concerns.</p>
<p>I understand your concern & frustration that the information may be false. Colleges have been caught falsifying their stats, but their motivations are clear. What would a school gain by fudging stats on Naviance? I’m not sure, but nothing surprises me. Take heart that those scores won’t really count when it comes time to budgetary concerns.</p>
<p>In our local HS, the guidance department input on Naviance depends on student responses at the end of the year…</p>
<p>for all you know (and I am not saying this is what happened) a student told guidance they were accepted when in fact they were not…if they did not matriculate, it would never be revealed.</p>
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<p>Lol. What lecture? What replies do you consider off-base? </p>
<p>And opinions are exactly what one seeks when asking a question on a public forum. That IS the way it works here.</p>
<p>“I was simply wondering if high schools can use incorrect data (either intentionally or inadvertently) and if that’s okay, particularly for the parents and students who rely on that data to make decisions on where to apply.”</p>
<p>The data is (are?) only as good as what’s put into it. Of course if the incorrect data is put in, then that’s what will be used – could have been a slip of the finger, whatever. If you’re suggesting that the other school did it intentionally so now they can show they had. Yale acceptance – that’s a long run for a short slide. It’s not like they ran an ad in the paper. And the bigger thing is - a kid who gets into Yale is a reflection on HIMSELF, not his high school.</p>
<p>I think the energy spent in checking other schools’ Naviance profiles with an eye to ensuring their accuracy and spotting “gotchas” is ill placed. Your son got in, he’s happy, all is well. I wouldn’t see why you would devote 5 seconds of your day to worrying about the reputation of some hs your kid didn’t attend.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone’s (and I do mean everyone) responses. There were some excellent points made. I think what I take away from the discussion is this: Naviance, despite all its very official-looking data and graphs etc. is at best an imperfect estimation of a high school’s admission performances. </p>
<p>An excellent point made by Rodney is that some schools rely on input from the student as to where they applied, were accepted, and then decided to attend. This of course is highly unscientific, and if it is common practice for schools to use student reported results, could result in completely erroneous information. Also a number of posters noted that their own kid’s data was wrong for various reasons. It seems that the data in Naviance are an amalgam of some accurate and some inaccurate numbers. So I guess the take away is, when using it as a search tool, use it with the knowledge it’s not always perfectly accurate, and possibly sometimes far from it.</p>
<p>Where some people objected, and I get this, is to my ascribing evil intent to the misinformation. I can see where that would cause some to call me out, so mea culpa. I hadn’t thought about this situation in over a year. It was a curious thing at the time and I didn’t give it a ton of thought until and another recent Naviance post on this forum brought it back to mind. I was just kind of throwing it out there to see what people thought. I do love a good conspiracy theory, perhaps this one got the best of me ;)</p>
<p>If you are concerned, I’d call the school, and ask if they really got four kids into Yale that year. I think the most likely cause is an honest mistake in entering data, or that the data is entered by someone who believed kids who said they got into Yale. While Naviance is mostly accurate, I never did get our GC to add two missing AP scores to my son’s data. (It doesn’t appear in the scattergrams, so I don’t think it matters to anyone in the long run, unless they crunch numbers and think that a kid with his grades and scores has a good chance at the schools that accepted him with a less rigorous program.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
An excellent point made by Rodney is that some schools rely on input from the student as to where they applied, were accepted, and then decided to attend. This of course is highly unscientific, and if it is common practice for schools to use student reported results, could result in completely erroneous information.[/unquote]</p>
<p>How else would (public) schools get that information? Colleges acceptances come to students individually, not to their schools.</p>
<p>D2’s school used Naviance. She was able to select schools she is applying to and then she could track the status of her application to see if various supporting documents have been sent. But she was not allowed to input if she was accepted or attending to any school, her school’s GC had to do that.</p>
<p>how about the kids did get into Yale and the zip code is their zip code … and they went to private school … so they pop up in the Yale info but did not go to the local high school?</p>
<p>Maybe the Yale admits & enrollees from the rival high school are transfers? They would be a year (at least) ahead of the OP’s son.</p>
<p>3togo, good point. I wonder how Yale handled kids who go away to boarding school, but their home zip code is in the state where the OP lives. Those could have shown up as well on the Yale website. And very possible if they went to a good boarding school that they may have gotten into Yale.</p>
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If the high school really cared a lot about accuracy, it could ask kids for documentation of acceptances. At my kids’ school, it was clear that Naviance was an extremely crude tool–you could use it for some general impressions, but not for anything very specific.</p>
<p>Something I am wondering about with respect to this question–</p>
<p>At my sons’ high school, all the Naviance data reflects the previous five years’ experience…not just the previous year, so as to protect the privacy of students. When the school first started using Naviance, the GCs went back a few years to recreate data to the best degree possible…since then, of course, it is much more accurate to the degree that they are given correct input from the graduating students. Of course, some colleges do give the info to the GCs as to which students they accepted/denied/waitlisted.</p>
<p>The GC has access to each previous year and obviously can give a student an idea of how closely similar students fared with their applications the previous year.</p>
<p>As far as students giving the schools accurate info-- GCs know to ask a few extra questions when a student says she got in to Williams and Wellesley but says she is going to Wittenberg.</p>
<p>I’m more inclined to blame human error, rather than intention, to this. The information from Naviance isn’t that public or easy to access, so a school would have nothing to gain by lying about admissions on Naviance. Where they may lie, however, is in the info schools give out to parents about the previous class year’s acceptances. At my kids’ previous (public) high school, we were told that every year, “at least” 2 kids get into Harvard, but I know for a fact that in the 2010 and 2011 classes, no one did.</p>
<p>I wish I knew more about the internal machinations of Naviance- there are so many good questions on this thread about how it actually works. </p>
<p>As far as the breakdown of years, I can see how when Naviance first came out (in our District, the data started in 2006), it would be very easy to identify some students in graphs on a college’s scattergram. However, as the years go by, the points become so numerous, it would be nearly impossible to identify a specific student. The schools in our district still break out # of apps, accepts and matriculates by specific year, but I think some schools choose to combine the data and do not break out by specific year. I think that is a choice made by each school on whether to show the stats by actual year. If the school in question had not broken things out by year, I wouldn’t have noticed the discrepancy. And by the way, in reference to a couple of posts above, it is the specific high school that claims to have these mystery admits and matriculate, not a boarding school. The idea of a deferred admit is plausible, but again, in this smallish community and with Facebook and all, there didn’t appear to be a likely candidate for that kind of scenario.</p>
<p>With regards to GC’s having access to all the data (where people apply, where they are accepted and where they matriculate), I think they must be getting that info from somewhere other than the student, either the Common AP (where they have equal access to a student’s application for the purposes of providing transcripts and letters of rec., or maybe the colleges give them that information (although that seems like a lot of work for the colleges?). Some kids apply to 12-15 colleges, are they reporting all the places they apply and where they got in versus where they were rejected? Also, the EA, apps, the ED apps, the ones who got deferred, then rejected, or deferred then accepted, all these are data points on the scattergrams, it must be data that’s getting input by the GC’s, but where do they get it?</p>
<p>Many scattergrams are getting so crowded in our school’s Naviance (especially the state U’s where there are so many who apply) that they’re impossible to read. I’m not sure they’re of any use to anyone. Breaking out by year does help I think for people who see a possible trend of increasing or decreasing acceptances. More musings I guess…</p>
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At my kids’ school, there is a form the kids fill out that is supposed to capture all this info.</p>
<p>Smaller schools may have a better handle on this than larger high schools. GCs are the gatekeepers for the school’s Naviance site, and they know which recommendations they wrote, and can get the results from the colleges, much less the kids. I’m fairly sure that the info on my kid’s school Naviance is right and fairly complete. But no matter how complete, Naviance simply is a snapshot. There are subtitles that it can’t capture. It’s still the best tool we have.</p>
<p>In our school the kids enter the colleges they are considering, which shows up on one tab. Then when they apply, they select “schools I’m applying to” under a drop down, those schools move from the considering tab to the applying tab. Once they get acceptances/rejections, there is another drop down for results. The guidance office does none of this for the kids. Stats, GPA/test scores, are entered by the GC and are not accessible for change by the kids. The kids then have to fill out a form to have their transcripts released. The GC updates the progress of the forms they submit. They do not ask for verification of the acceptances that we know of. DS has 3 acceptances in and they have not asked for copies of the letters.</p>