Naviance is wrong

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sorry if your son is disappointed...but I think what people are saying is that a lot of low chances do not add up (in a cumulative way) to a large chance. He was unlikely (statistically) to get into his reaches (or they would have been targets). Don't know how optimistic you were in choosing your targets.

It is also possible (though I know that this is hard for a parent to hear) that his essay or recommendations were not well received.

Consider this a teachable moment...He will learn that there are many paths to a happy future.

This exactly. I have a friend whose son was rejected from many schools (targets and reaches) with near perfect SAT, 4.5 GPA, took every possible AP, high SAT II scores, etc. He had a great story to tell about struggles in his family life (alcoholism, etc.) but sadly, he did not let anyone review his essays prior to submitting them. His mom got a peak at his common app essay and did not like what she saw, but he refused to change it. He should have gotten into those schools with those stats and with the story he could have told. The essays are SO important.

No one really cares about the story you are telling about your messed up alcoholic family. What they care about is your intellect and your innovative intellectual ideas .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait a second, OP’s child had close to 1600 SAT and close to 4.0 unweighted gpa (and clearly a rigorous course load in weighted gpa was close to 5.0) and no one thinks it is unusual that he was rejected from UIUC?? Even with no extracurriculars he should have been a lock, come on. Frankly I am surprised he was not admitted to Carnegie Melon either, unless he applied to CS. I am sorry OP, that must be very disappointing to your son. I hope that he is happy with his admitted choice and I am sure that he will do great wherever he lands.

CMU CS and UIUC CS have applicant pools that are just as competitive as Caltech/MIT/Stanford. 1600 SAT and perfect GPA are just floor level of achievement not the ceiling.

First, I don’t think OP said her child applied to CS. But regardless, the collective applicants and admittees of UIUC CS are not on par with MIT or CalTech, get real.

Have a look: http://csrankings.org/#/index?all&northamerica


Top colleges sometimes reject kids they know consider them a safety to get to the right yield numbers. Wish they wouldn’t do that. What if the kid really wanted to go there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, smart kids THRIVE in safeties. They get early research positions, arent as stressed, and tend to be leaders in clubs and start new projections.

Who wants to go to a reach where you realize how smart you aren’t and feel like you are completing 24/7. High stress and depression runs rampant.

They don’t call CMU the school “where fun goes to decide” for nothing.

I thought it was “where fun goes to die.” And that’s UChicago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who said Naviance was a definite predictor of where your kid would get in?

No one, however, it is misleading. So just a heads up

Grades and test scores gets your application a review, but admission is based on other things.

The data is skewed by athletes, URMs, legacies, and other hooked applicants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who said Naviance was a definite predictor of where your kid would get in?

No one, however, it is misleading. So just a heads up

Grades and test scores gets your application a review, but admission is based on other things.

The data is skewed by athletes, URMs, legacies, and other hooked applicants.

Or the counseling office not bothering to make sure the numbers are not 5 years old in school acceptance rates! That might be why so many posters say schools thinks schools are easier to accepted at than reality!

[Anonymous]

OP, I think your son was rejected because of the recent research that demonstrates the inability to properly understand statistical analysis has a hereditary component.

[Anonymous]

I found Niche to be more accurate

[Anonymous]

I think it is a sign of how twisted this process has gotten when people start characterizing traumatic childhoods as "great" because they lend themselves to juicy college essays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think your son was rejected because of the recent research that demonstrates the inability to properly understand statistical analysis has a hereditary component.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CMU is understandable and s a reach for almost all. UIUC, which think is University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a 65% acceptance rate. Did your student apply as an engineering major? Even so, I might ask the guidance counselor to make some phone calls.

UIUC has a high acceptance rate because it spells out ahead of time what you need for scores and class rank. people then don't bother to apply if you're not in that range.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who said Naviance was a definite predictor of where your kid would get in?

No one, however, it is misleading. So just a heads up

Grades and test scores gets your application a review, but admission is based on other things.

The data is skewed by athletes, URMs, legacies, and other hooked applicants.

Or the counseling office not bothering to make sure the numbers are not 5 years old in school acceptance rates! That might be why so many posters say schools thinks schools are easier to accepted at than reality!

FCPS parent here.

Are there different version of Naviance? Ours has data points from the previous 3 years in the scattergrams. I believe the supermath numbers say that they are from 2010 and forward. What are you all talking about when you say “old data”?

[Anonymous]

^^^SUPERMATCH, not supermath.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is unethical to me, since they are not signing the letter.

I bet the colleges do not know that there is a marketing team vetting the letters. I am a professor (who is often asked to write letters for students) and would find this SO disturbing. Don't teachers have a voice in the process? You should organize around this.

What school are you talking about? I bet it is a private.

Of course it is private; public school have one counselor to 250+ kids, and they do not have time to review the kids grades, let alone read and edit letters of recommendation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who said Naviance was a definite predictor of where your kid would get in?

No one, however, it is misleading. So just a heads up

Grades and test scores gets your application a review, but admission is based on other things.

The data is skewed by athletes, URMs, legacies, and other hooked applicants.

Or the counseling office not bothering to make sure the numbers are not 5 years old in school acceptance rates! That might be why so many posters say schools thinks schools are easier to accepted at than reality!

FCPS parent here.

Are there different version of Naviance? Ours has data points from the previous 3 years in the scattergrams. I believe the supermath numbers say that they are from 2010 and forward. What are you all talking about when you say “old data”?

NP. MCPS parent and we were told, outcomes are entirely self-reported by students. If counseling gets a request for a final transcript for an admitted student, they may double check that naviance reflects the same, but that is their only way of corroborating what students have entered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's an example from DD's Naviance: I'm picking NYU, because it's popular, but my DD doesn't want to go there. In the last 3 years, 33 students have applied and 6 have been accepted. That's an acceptance rate of 18%, which is much lower than the national acceptance rate for NYU. Looking more closely at the Scattergram, 6 out of 7 students who applied with an SAT over 1400 got accepted. (I'm not sure how many years of application cycles the Scattergrams cover). There were many students waitlisted who scored between 1350 and 1400.

My DD is at a school with a high poverty rate. Less than 50% of students go directly to a 4 year university. A small percentage go out of state. I think that in this circumstance, a high SAT counts for a lot, because universities can't trust that an A means a lot (there isn't much competition). We have a very diverse school, and I want to assure the public that URM's are not getting high acceptance rates simply because they are URM.

It's also possible that NYU doesn't bother to admit many students from DD's school because NYU knows that it offers crappy financial aid. The yield is not likely to be high once students see the bottom line. My conclusion is that IF DD wanted to go to NYU, she would have a very good chance with a 1400+ SAT, but nothing is guaranteed. Thoughts?

NYU acceptance rate for 2019 was 16%. I am nit sure what old data you are looking at .... 2018 was 18%. So you entire point us dumb.

Naviance for my DD's school lists the national acceptance rate for NYU as 35% in a huge font. It claims the data is from 2018. Can I sue Naviance for serious inaccuracy? I believed what it told me. It sounds like the acceptance rate for NYU has decreased rapidly in the past few years. If that's the case, the acceptance rate at DD's school has been lower than the national acceptance rate from the same years.

The opposite is true with more unusual schools. So few people apply to U Toronto from DD's school that the acceptance rate is extremely high.

That's your fault for not researching the schools more carefully.
I can see from your post you didn't research U Toronto carefully either.
U Toronto acceptance rate has always been extremely high for everyone. Kids with only 1300s SATs have a decent chance of getting in.
It's a very big school with a terrible undergrad reputation but a good research reputation.

I bet you just searched U Toronto rankings, saw it was high in those global research rankings and assumed it was a good undergrad institution, then called it a day.