How reliable is Naviance?

[Anonymous]

I always hear people say Naviance is the best resource to determine how competitive your kid is for a particular college. We looked at this today and DC's SAT is their school day SAT; it's not a superscore and doesn't count the better SAT score from a test taken outside of school. Does that mean the sea of green and red checkmarks we are looking at aren't accurate either? If so, what good is it then?

[Anonymous]

I mean it’s college admissions. It changes every year and there’s very little rhyme or reason. So even if naviance isn’t particularly accurate, it can still be the best resource available, because there are no decent resources.

[Anonymous]

Some public HS have their naviance public (visit as “guest”) - you can find links on Reddit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I always hear people say Naviance is the best resource to determine how competitive your kid is for a particular college. We looked at this today and DC's SAT is their school day SAT; it's not a superscore and doesn't count the better SAT score from a test taken outside of school. Does that mean the sea of green and red checkmarks we are looking at aren't accurate either? If so, what good is it then?

As long as your kids' SAT score is within range, that's not the part to worry about. Especially if their superscore is within 50 points of the one in the database. GPA is more important. But if you are worried, have DC ask their counselor to update Naviance with the better score.

[Anonymous]

Yes it is the best resource available to you. School data is the more relevant data. That said, Naviance does not show rigor. However, rigor is the most important one factor colleges evaluate an applicant's academic readiness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes it is the best resource available to you. School data is the more relevant data. That said, Naviance does not show rigor. However, rigor is the most important one factor colleges evaluate an applicant's academic readiness.

It shows rigor to an extent if GPA's are weighted.

[Anonymous]

It’s a good datapoint. Some schools have different admissions data for different majors. Naviance doesn’t distinguish and can be misleading

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a good datapoint. Some schools have different admissions data for different majors. Naviance doesn’t distinguish and can be misleading

This. Also, doesn't show ECs, athletes, legacies, etc. Take it as an indicator that a school is potentially within reach, nothing more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes it is the best resource available to you. School data is the more relevant data. That said, Naviance does not show rigor. However, rigor is the most important one factor colleges evaluate an applicant's academic readiness.

It shows rigor to an extent if GPA's are weighted.

Not really. Schools around us have 0.5 bump for all honors, AP and DE. Other schools bump AP and DE to 1.0, honors 0.5, but then AP precal and APES are weighted the same as AC calc BC and AP Chem. One school calls Multivariable calc "honors" and it gets 0.5, despite being the hardest math level at the school. AO's understand the differences and they can scan a transcript quickly, using the school profile list of courses offered, and detect rigor differences easily. There are numerous videos of AOs at top unis and lacs that show the process. weighted gpa cannot reveal rigor in that way

[Anonymous]

Not very reliable because, for public schools at least, they are self-reported data

[Anonymous]

Isn't the GPA on Naviance actually the student's GPA after *senior year* - not what they used to apply to schools? If so, I find that extremely misleading.

[Anonymous]

It's still the best data. Asking DCUM for input from a wide range of schools is not helpful at all.

[Anonymous]

it's as good as the counselors who imput it.

ours is very good. they also pull the totally weirdly hooked so as not to give false hope

[Anonymous]

It's a great resource IF all the information is inputted accurately and is complete.

It's often missing data if students didn't put it in or if things changed late in the season.

For example, we're at a small private and I know of a few of my DD's friends who never put their final info into naviance after they got in from the waitlist. They just moved on and forgot.

[Anonymous]

it's probably the best you can have within your high school.