Totally agree. Naviance has the most relevant info for any given college applicant, since GPAs vary so widely across high schools. But Naviance can give an applicant a false sense of hope based on the GPA/test scores of previous applicants because it doesn’t disclose the accepted students’ gender, athletic, URM, etc. categories. It seems that high schools could provide more details for Naviance to display in its Scattergrams.
Edited to add: also the number of years of FL 
Naviance should always be used in consultation with the guidance counselor. Once a particular college looks promising, check with the guidance counselor who can identify dots represent hooked students.
Case in point…our D21 took the SAT and didn’t do so well (I think 1220?)…so she switched to the ACT and ended up with a 34. Naviance at her school only shows SAT…so her scatter-gram dot looked incredibly low. Anyone looking would have to assume major hook…but it was just bad data.
That happened to my nephew. He took the SAT and did not do so well- took the ACT and got a 36. Naviance showed both scores, but on different scattergrams, and there was no way to see that both scores were his. It looked like somebody with low scores (relative to that school) was admitted.
This would be impossible at my public high school. Every student in the school (9-12) has two mandatory GC consultations per year, one each semester. It doesn’t matter if they’re going to college or not. Kids are asked what sort of future they envision and the GC assists with making sure they are on a decent track with classes for them. If students aren’t sure (many aren’t), they keep them on the max academic course teachers feel they are capable of successfully completing to keep their options open. Any additional GC meetings are optional.
I’d be really surprised to hear other schools do things differently, but then again, on cc nothing really surprises me anymore so I suppose it’s possible. It’s not intelligent, but it’s possible.
Unfortunately many HS students do not have access to serviceable guidance counselors, nor do they have mandatory post-secondary planning meetings. Average GC to HS student ratio in the US is 430:1 (per NACAC, see link below), and many GCs spend more time on social emotional counseling rather than college/post-secondary path counseling.
The NACAC report accessible from this page says HS counselors spend 18% of their time on post-secondary counseling. https://www.nacacnet.org/advocacy--ethics/initiatives/school-counseling/
This report cites data that 1 in 5 HS students (~8M) don’t have any access to a school counselor. It also has state by state counselor:student detailed ratios. https://www.nacacnet.org/news--publications/Research/state-by-state-student-to-counselor-ratio-report2/
Our school is average or slightly above statistically. Schools below average are out there, that’s for sure. My mind has me wondering if those students (or parents) would be on cc. Could be. If so, it would be a great resource as long as they can ignore the Top 20 or “be a loser” mentality that can be on here.
Doing the math, a GC doing 20 minute conferences for 4 hours per day and 180 school days can see 2160 students. Divide that by two visits per student and it’s a little over 1000 individuals. If the average is 430:1 (our school would be close to that), there’s more than enough time to make it happen (over twice as much as the minimum) and this math assumes it only happens for half a day per school day (allowing for a lot of leeway with scheduling).
Not having GCs is a bigger issue for those students.
True on the math, but remember most of that direct student time is not spent on post-secondary counseling. Students at schools that have separate social emotional and post-secondary counselors are fortunate.
My daughter attends a small (60-70 kids per grade) but decent public school and is a rising senior. She has never had a required meeting with the guidance counselor, including this year. Apparently they think fall of senior year (assuming they meet with them then - no idea) to be sufficient for college prep. Our school sends very few to Ivy League and its ilk, but we do get one every couple years or so and a few attend other selective LAC every year. No idea if it would be higher if they actually had any guidance at school.
Ours do both. I agree that separate is better. We had college counselors from one of those Teach for America type programs (not that one, but similar) for about 6 years. Each worked for 2 years. Two were terrific. One was the pits. Then funding ran out and the school board wouldn’t add the salary into the budget. Our school tried for public funding, but didn’t get anywhere near enough.
Such is life I suppose when you live in an area with < 20% college graduates as parents.
Our GCs are back to doing all counseling.
What state? I’m curious to know if this is a state thing or an individual school thing. I’ve been in NY and PA (plus a private school in FL) and all had GCs with mandatory sessions for students to be sure they were on track for graduation.
That said, I’ve no idea if it’s required in those states or was just part of the schools I was associated with.
Our LPS, which is a blue ribbon school, had 1 GC for 250 students. They were assigned to a class freshman year and stayed with them through senior year so they’d get to know the kids. This was a good idea but it meant that the GCs did college counseling once every 4 years. A friend who was a GC there said it left them really ill-equipped to keep up with a pretty fast-changing environment for college applications. She also said that the lion’s share of her time was spent with students whose needs were not college related. Our district has only a small percentage of families who are "prestige " oriented. Acceptance to Bowdoin or Williams would generate blank stares. Penn State or Rutgers would be heartily congratulated.
Clearly this differs from school to school but it seems based on our experience that a student, even in a decent district, could be ill-informed.
For comparison, elite private high schools have dedicated college counselors who are often well connected to various colleges, so they can give much better reach/match/likely/safety assessments and suggest colleges “off the beaten path”* that may be suitable. Perhaps that is what one is really paying for there.
*The “beaten path” commonly means local public and private colleges, state flagships, and a small number of prestige privates.
@ucbalumnus, we often said that DS’ CC at BS was worth every penny of tuition for at least one year! We wanted to build a shrine to her at the end of the process. And yes, she was SO good at helping him develop a list and present himself well.
To your point, the local public High School has 2 GC’s for 450-500 graduates each year. It is always ranked in the top 40 HS’s in the state. The private HS in town has 2 GC’s for a class of 70, with multiple scheduled meetings both with and without parents.
Yeah, the staffing ratio - counselors, college counselors, nurses, teachers, admin, etc - was one of the reasons we gave up on public school, as much as we wanted to stay. Nothing substitutes for the school staff actually knowing a student.
The college counseling is definitely part of the appeal of private school, but people assume the schools are pipelines to the Ivies. They aren’t (lots of threads about that, don’t want to rehash). The value is the CCs know the students, know the colleges, and can shepherd the entire process. Around these parts people spend a lot of money on private consultants, but I appreciate that it is built into kiddo’s school. They have class time set aside, and each CC has a manageable load.
How big is your school? My high school is huge, with 3000+ kids total and 750 in my grade. We have 4 college guidance counselors, making our ratio well above the average of 430:1. Our school could do what you said, and the math checks out but many teachers are very opposed to taking away their class time, so students are encouraged to see their GC on their own time (before school, lunch, or after school) unless they get permission from their teacher.
We’re about half your size with a typical class size around 350 and 3 GCs that do everything, not just college. Fairly recently we added a 4th which allows one of our “originals” to do Career Counseling. This tends to help the non 4 year college bound mostly. He’s a good resource IMO letting students know about a lot of options out there.
Our school is lucky to have counselors that can focus on helping students with college, too bad not enough students go visit them…
It’s very old fashioned but one can go to the library and review a copy of Fiskes or The Princeton Review and it will give you most of the information you need on the minimum criteria for entry into their university. I think many are blinded by the rankings and forget to look at all of the other information and sources available. These books also make it very obvious that there are many other universities than those at the top of a USNWR list.