College Kick Start - Anyone heard of it?

[Anonymous]

Checking to see if anyone has heard anything about College Kickstart or has experience with it.
Our HS (non-DC pvt school) is using this as a tool for college counseling. Our HS College Counselor shared a report that ranks colleges into likely category and grades DS college list (got a C+). Would love to hear of others experience with this tool/ appreciate any feedback.

[Anonymous]

Total waste of time because it does not factor in the weight of your classes.

[Anonymous]

Good starting point only considers GPA and test scores. Also class rank if available. It can't figure in ECs or rigor (beyond WGPA). Our counselor used it but changed the "grade" to take into account those other factors. We found it useful with that context applied.

[Anonymous]

OP here, our counselor changed a target school rating by Kick Start to unlikely - which was kind of weird.

[Anonymous]

I don’t see any benefit. My kid is pretty competitive at their school and our kickstart kicked out some pretty lame schools. College decisions are so school specific and these programs don’t have that info.

[Anonymous]

Naviance was more accurate for us than this one (at least this year).

[Anonymous]

Seems pretty clear that our counseling dept is using Kickstart to outsource list formation, essentially forcing students/families to tinker with their lists to generate a B+ or higher grade. This saves counselors a lot of work, since it compels families to include safeties and targets without during intervention on the part of the counselor. A B+ list is required for the most important late junior year meeting with the counselor. I can see why they have families use this, even though a lot of the information or features do not seem very useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems pretty clear that our counseling dept is using Kickstart to outsource list formation, essentially forcing students/families to tinker with their lists to generate a B+ or higher grade. This saves counselors a lot of work, since it compels families to include safeties and targets without during intervention on the part of the counselor. A B+ list is required for the most important late junior year meeting with the counselor. I can see why they have families use this, even though a lot of the information or features do not seem very useful.

They do it to get the student invested in creating their college list. Students typicallly want to focus on their reach colleges and no other colleges. This makes the student do more than that.

[Anonymous]

My DC got nothing less than an A- in highest rigor curriculum and had a 3.9+ GPA and it still ranked all of their colleges as reaches through this program. Doesn’t factor legacy or school specific info either. Seems like a worthless waste of time. Private school counselors should start doing their jobs for all of that tuition money instead of just making sure everyone has a safety!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems pretty clear that our counseling dept is using Kickstart to outsource list formation, essentially forcing students/families to tinker with their lists to generate a B+ or higher grade. This saves counselors a lot of work, since it compels families to include safeties and targets without during intervention on the part of the counselor. A B+ list is required for the most important late junior year meeting with the counselor. I can see why they have families use this, even though a lot of the information or features do not seem very useful.

They do it to get the student invested in creating their college list. Students typicallly want to focus on their reach colleges and no other colleges. This makes the student do more than that.

The “required” is the problem (of a b+ before a meeting). If no consideration for things like rigor, URM, a niche hobby/sport/art/ec, AND there is no legitimate reason to mandate this, it is unfair. You miss all the shots you don’t take.

[Anonymous]

Counselor used this list to remove a lot of reach schools and a few targets. Perhaps thought my DC overshot even though she had good safety option.

[Anonymous]

I suspect the program is used as the "bad guy" for private school college counselors. Doesn't sound perfect, but it sounds like it's designed to temper expectations and maybe reduce some of the tough conversations the CC has to initiate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Checking to see if anyone has heard anything about College Kickstart or has experience with it.
Our HS (non-DC pvt school) is using this as a tool for college counseling. Our HS College Counselor shared a report that ranks colleges into likely category and grades DS college list (got a C+). Would love to hear of others experience with this tool/ appreciate any feedback.

Kickstart probably thinks you are overly optimistic in your choices by having too many reaches or unlikelies. Even if your DC is 4.0 uw / 1500+, every top 20 is unlikely. My DS uses Kickstart along with Naviance (as do his counselors). He has an A+ grade with 16 or 18 colleges. 1 unlikely, 2 reaches. The rest are targets and safeties. Yes, we know admissions are less predictable than that, and he might not get into some of the ones we expect he will. But we are generally building his list from the bottom up. Started with his criteria (healthy mix of genders, generally smaller to mid-size colleges within a day’s drive of home, with a liberal arts-style curriculum, smaller class sizes, generally pretty close to cities or good size towns). Looked at colleges from his HS class profiles that matched these to see where a decent number kids have been admitted from his school (which is a small, rigorous private where they tend to send kids to a fairly concentrated group of colleges), along with conversations with his CCO about a handful of others, and then narrowed down based on his GPA/test scores from Naviance/Kickstart. From that the goal has been to identify 8-10 schools we think he’s either very likely to get into or more likely than not, and that he could feel excited to attend. Have been visiting those first. If his SAT increases and his junior year grades are on track, maybe look at some slightly more selective schools in the fall, but only after he’s found enough to be excited about in the first category. Notice at no point did any reference to published rankings factor into making the lists, despite the cries of some here that they are to essential to help narrow the field of 3,000 colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suspect the program is used as the "bad guy" for private school college counselors. Doesn't sound perfect, but it sounds like it's designed to temper expectations and maybe reduce some of the tough conversations the CC has to initiate.

Yes.

But def try for a few (up to 10 reaches) if your kid has it in them….mine got in though the stats wouldn’t have predicted (unusual major/ECs/awards etc though)….
Be prepared for rejection but do shoot the shot.

[Anonymous]

Same with DC’s private (West Coast) - switching from Naviance to College Kick Start. Following this thread.