Here’s the article mentioned by @psparent in post #35
https://grownandflown.com/college-counselor-wants-parents-know/
I find Naviance to be much less useful this year since they started using the speed dials instead of the scattergrams.
IDK… I have almost Irish twins and they’re polar opposites. K1 is smart, standoffish and arrogant , but really kind and somewhat vulnerable underneath- that is- if you dig deep enough. I’d still like to take him out back and throw him in a mud puddle and roll him around sometimes, but he has come a long way since BS. K2 is smart, too but he’s quiet, observant , wicked, wicked funny when you get to know him and very strong willed. When we were approaching College , I was thinking a lot like twinsmama - like how the heck is this going to go?
I remember watching ( from my car ) as K2 talked to an Ivy coach after a race during the summer before BS senior year. This particular coach was notorious for being abrupt and kind of a jerk, but there was K2 totally relaxed, animated even- and they were both laughing their heads off… for like 30 minutes! K2 finally gets into the car and I said, What was that about? He said, Oh, mother… when he asked me about my GPA, I had him on 3.
Coffee came out of my mouth and splattered the windshield. K2, I already knew, had his heart set on a certain LAC but Ivy coach saw him race and asked him to visit in fall. K2 declined ( not knowing at the time that his FC LAC would be a bitter disappointment- and the most epic college tour/ interview story of all time! ) Thankfully he recovered … and found a new FC LAC.
K1 met with the same Ivy coach ( K1 worshipped this guy ) the summer before for like 2 minutes. I was there watching from the stands trying not to look too obvious and it was painful. The coach totally blew him off. But, he pressed on and ended up getting accepted ED to a different Ivy.
When we were walking back to the car, I asked K1 if he was okay and he just glanced at me ( cold as ice ) and said, fine- and kept walking. I’ll admit that it broke my heart because I knew that deep down inside he was completely devastated .
I also have a confession to make: As most of you guys know- my kids had been away at BS for six years ( JBS-SS ), and by the time they applied to college , I barely knew them. I mean , I knew them, of course- but I didn’t understand what really made them tick until those summers before their senior year - when all the bars suddenly got raised really, really high. That’s when everything came together for me- and most likely for them, too. Oddly, I think that was a plus and maybe not thinking about college until we absolutely had to wasn’t such a bad thing. FWIW- I didn’t read one college essay until after they were submitted - how’s that for a leap of faith? And, they made me beg, too!
They did find their colleges ( without any real planning/ prep or opinions coming from us ), and I think they ended up exactly where they need to be- warts and all. Both boys had extremely rocky first years ( where they questioned everything! ), but everything seems sorted and they’re both happy now. Two very different kids that did it their way and on their terms. They learned an awful lot about themselves during their time at BS, and it has definitely served them well- which really fulfilled my one and only wish.
I remember K2’s official visit and meeting with the coach before we headed out. He asked K2 all kinds of interesting non-sport related questions and as K2 answered them, I remember thinking, Who’s this kid? I was blown away by the depth and confidence in all his answers. Parents ask us all the time what did we do to get into two Ivy ( SD and K1 ) and one amazing LAC ( K2 ). I can honestly say that we didn’t do anything other than provide the opportunities they wanted ( which was attending BS and rowing ) , and then we got out of their way.
Your kids will do very well, @twinsmama . There IS a market for real deal- genuine kids at selective colleges. Keep the faith- but more importantly relax ( which is super hard for everyone - myself included! ) and watch your kids shine and amaze you during this process … that’s truly the fun part. 
Trust me- they have this, and so do you!
^Way too much coffee- sorry!
@EarlyMTNester Could you explain more the difference? I’m beyond that stage but curious as to how it works now.
@doschicos: This year Naviance seems to have dropped the scattergrams. One college counselor explained that this was a response to the new SAT. They did not want people being able to look at where a particular student plotted out visually compared to other students who had taken a different test.
In its place, Naviance has substituted dumbed-down little speed dials that look like speedometers with color-coded red yellow and green areas. Test score too low means SAT dial arrow points to the left in the red zone. Borderline GPA will have an arrow on that GPA dial pointing to the middle area in yellow. Safety school has all arrow dials well to the right and in the green.
The scattergrams or dials must vary based on your school’s setup because our Naviance still has the scattergrams.
DD’s Naviance also has the scattergram with a drop down menu to pick SAT 1600, SAT 2400, ACT.
It may be college driven. I just looked at two different colleges on the same BS Naviance. One had speed dials. One had a scattergram.
On the other kid’s other BS Naviance I have seen nothing but speed dials. It may be she was only applying to speed dial colleges, but there was quite a range of size, selectivity, geographic location, etc…
@EarlyMTNester I think you are onto something! I just poked around on DD’s naviance some more and it seems college specific. All of the schools she applied to have scattergrams but it was easy just now to find some schools that were speed dial only.
@PhotographerMom , Thanks so much for all that! You struck a nerve when you talked about feeling at one point that you didn’t know your children. I’ve been struggling with that, too, especially with my son, who communicates less of his inner workings than his sister and who has been very rapidly becoming more and more like a man this year. You’re right that I should just relax and see what happens, but sometimes it seems that fussing about the college admission process is all I can do for them right now.
@hellomaisy , I’m jealous that you got a list! We’ve made our own lists, but there haven’t been specific suggestions yet, at least not in writing. I’m with you that I would think well-chosen schools with a 40% admit rate would be appropriate reaches for a student whose matches are in the 70% range, especially given Mercersburg’s good matriculation history. And I’m not crazy about the way they categorize by admit rate, anyway, but again, they get good results, so they must know what they are doing.
It seems from reading other Naviance threads that every school has a fair amount of discretion in how they set it up, what’s disclosed, how it collects data from students, what functionality is enabled, etc.
Nope. Just went back to other kid’s Naviance at different school. It has no scattergrams for schools that had them on other kid’s Naviance, which manes the BS must be suppressing that information and just giving us the speed dials.
I really enjoyed the college process with both of my kids. I think part of it was purely just spending a lot of time with them (we tried to make the road trips fun and searched out good dining spots along the way as well). But, a big part of it is what @PhotographerMom gets to - the process really helped me understand my kids at a very different level, what was important to them, how they reacted, etc. I think each kid learned a lot about themselves as well.
@EarlyMTNester yes, the schools control what you see. According to friends, many of the private day schools in my area don’t even allow family access to Naviance (particularly the scattergrams) unless you’re sitting in the CC office.
I thought the scattergrams were gone from our view, but they are still accessible through a more convoluted path.
Wanted to add another perspective, even if kids don’t end up with the college admission decisions they want, it isn’t the end of the road.
Our oldest had an abysmal college acceptance outcome. Literally was rejected or wait listed at 9 schools. I won’t bore you with his stats - but this was a shocking outcome. Great test scores recommendations, good GPA and very involved in EC and sports. We scrambled and got him into a college that had heavily marketed to him. He attended one week and was absolutely miserably- terrible fit. We allowed him to move home and take a gap year. He spent his gap year working. We hired a private college counselor and he reapplied fall after graduation. This time he had 3 acceptances to great schools. He is now finishing sophmore year at one of these schools (he had been wait listed as a senior here).
Our daughter left Exeter after sophmore year. Her GPA was terrible. She worked hard at our local high school for junior and senior year and went on to attend a well known college. (25%acceptance). She worked hard there for 2 years and decided apply to transfer to a higher ranked program at other colleges. She just received her first acceptance today to USC. Apparently around 40% of kids will transfer colleges at some point. Many of our kids friends have changed colleges already.
@vegas1 it is really wonderful to hear your you and your kids experiences. Just going to Exeter doesn’t mean anything really…in fact it makes everything harder. Is it worth it? We will see.
One thing that I didn’t really realize until my oldest went through this process is that not all schools actually care very much about extracurriculars and essays. You hear so much about having to write great essays and how your extracurriculars need to tell a great story about who you are as a person, yada yada yada, that I got sucked into that thinking and worrying about it. And it certainly is very important for many schools. But there are also great schools that really care the most about test scores and GPA. You can tell which schools these are pretty easily by looking at the Naviance scattergrams. Once we realized this, it made the process a bit less stressful as there was a school or two that we were pretty sure he’d get into based on his scores/GPA – not technically “safety” schools, but functionally so for him because they care most about scores/GPA and his were comfortably above their average.
The lesson here is that when you’re thinking about the mix of schools to apply to, you might also pay attention to which schools focus more heavily on ECs vs. which are stats-driven, and then shape your list to whichever side of that equation suits your student’s record the best.
^ The college admissions rep from Bates who addressed Tempkid1’s school said that the essay makes a negative difference in about 5% of the apps and a positive difference in about 5% and for the remaining 90% of their applicants it is just checking the box. I don’t think that they were suggesting that the essay is unimportant. Instead, I think that they were suggesting that the majority of their applicants were writing well-conceived and well-executed essays.
I think the college essay or personal statement is used differently by different colleges. Weslyan for instance says they just want a well written essay. Content doesn’t really matter. Other colleges want to learn more about the student through the essay.