How accurate and useful is Naviance?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It would be vastly more helpful if it identifies which students were athletic recruits and URMs

From the naviance perspective, that only matters at a very small number of elite colleges

[Anonymous]

We thought it would be helpful, but it was not close to predictive at all. The landscape has totally changed. If somehow you can filter out the data and just look at the last two years, that would be helpful. We found the common data sets for each school helpful.

[Anonymous]

We found it useless for the top schools. The # of admitted was too low for us to generalize from, and their admissions were ideosyncratic. At that level of university, admissions decisions rely so much on aspects beyond gpa and sat. In particular, it was common to see an admission that was much lower in terms of test scores than all of the rejections. (Probably a legacy or athlete?)

[Anonymous]

My kid is at a private and has limited access to naviance so my takes are recollections from a college office visit. I also only looked at 10 or so schools that my kid was considering.

What I noticed is schools below a 10% admit, couldn’t discern much, but once you got to 15%- 20% admit rate, there was some consistency with the admits: above a certain point on GPA/test scores, there were no red marks or you could correlate them with RD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be vastly more helpful if it identifies which students were athletic recruits and URMs

They are the green checks that aren't by all of the other green checks.

Not a complete picture, but in general the outliers have some major hook. Many athletes and URMs, though, are also with the other green checks.

Identifying athletes and URMs would give way too much info to others about the specific identity of the applicant.

[Anonymous]

You cannot tell from it which green checks or red Xs applied test optional. Also, if you apply to a school that hardly anyone applies to, it's not particularly useful. Also, at least in our school, it seems like everything is not entered. I know for sure that we didn't enter Florida State because they didn't require transcripts from the school and I guess no rec. letters either (it's been a few years). So my daughter applied but the school had no idea.

For the OP, in addition to being able to see the scattergrams of which students got in based on GPA and test score and looking over schools that match your criteria, Naviance is also used as a way the high school communicates with the college. You enter into Naviance which schools you want to apply to and request your transcript for those schools. The high school then uploads your transcript to those schools on Naviance. You also request teacher recommendation letters through Naviance, and the teacher uploads their letter to it. And all that information goes to the college through Naviance, along with a school profile and usually a counselor recommendation.

Generally, but not always, you apply to the school with a common application (that can be used for multiple schools). So the college gets your application when you send it and gets the Naviance info. (transcripts, teacher rec., etc.) when the school sends it.

The system is way more complicated than it needs to be. Seriously. I just went through it for a second time and it was only marginally better because I knew exactly what the steps were that I had to take (school gives very little guidance). But there are still a lot of them. And it's a pain waiting for the school to do their part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is the best information you can get.

without any context

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is the best information you can get.

without any context

That's a meaningless comment. Of course there is context. Maybe not the full compliment of data points you'd find most useful, but it's a scattergram full of context.

[Anonymous]

I currently have a senior so have been looking at it a lot, but obviously don’t know yet how DC’s results will compare to the scattergram. From looking at them though, and the schools DC is applying to, I would say it depends. Some large state schools have seas of red or green based on stats. I’m assuming it’s fairly accurate if you fall into one of those. Other, more competitive, state schools and competitive privates are a lot of red with green scattered. I think this is the difficult part. You can see stats of people who got in, but you don’t know anything about them. Not just if they are an athlete, legacy, URM, male, female, etc. But also what school within the university they applied to. Some schools my kid is looking at have vastly different acceptance rates based on if it’s the school of engineering, computer science, arts and sciences, drama, etc. Take Cornell for example, the school of agriculture and school of hotel management are 20-25% acceptance rates whereas engineering is about 5%, maybe less. Or a school like Carnegie Mellon that has a top drama program and is very hard to get into, but acceptance is based on auditions and portfolio reviews rather than grades. A lot of schools have these disparities and it makes it hard to know true odds based on Naviance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be vastly more helpful if it identifies which students were athletic recruits and URMs

From the naviance perspective, that only matters at a very small number of elite colleges

Um, no. URMs get into with laughable stats at every college.

That said, Naviance and Parchment are worthless.