What is Naviance?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Being at a private with only about 90 seniors, I found the small sample size very helpful because - at least for the highly selective schools - I can pretty much figure out who a lot of the applicants are. If, for example, you know the #2 person in the class got waitlisted at Stanford, you can make note of her test scores (and GPA) from that Scattegram and then track her other results to see that she got into Brown and also waitlisted at Harvard. Once you can ID a few kids, it becomes very helpful for getting a broad strokes picture of your kid's chances based on the last couple of years' worth of admissions decisions.

Quite honestly, seeing the multiple HYPS wait list decisions for last year's #1 student (whose Scattergram everyone could instantly ID because it was the top GPA in the class and he had a perfect ACT) was very powerful in getting my rising senior to take seriously the task of coming up with match and likely schools he would actually be happy to attend. If Mr. #1 wasn't gliding into these schools, it made him fully comprehend that he might not be either.

I think this kind of identifiability is why smaller privates don't do Naviance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Keep in mind though. Some of the data are self-reported by the students and, therefore, not very reliable

At our school, all of the Naviance data is entered by the College Counseling Office. My son didn't even really know what his GPA was because the school doesn't calculate them to share with students, but they had calculated it to enter into Naviance. The College Counselor also has access to SAT Subject Test scores on his view of the Scattergrams - that doesn't show on the Student/Parent view, but it's another very useful piece of information for him as he counsels students about where to apply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Keep in mind though. Some of the data are self-reported by the students and, therefore, not very reliable

At our school, all of the Naviance data is entered by the College Counseling Office. My son didn't even really know what his GPA was because the school doesn't calculate them to share with students, but they had calculated it to enter into Naviance. The College Counselor also has access to SAT Subject Test scores on his view of the Scattergrams - that doesn't show on the Student/Parent view, but it's another very useful piece of information for him as he counsels students about where to apply.

But how do get the access to schools accepted/rejected/WL? Colleges don't report back to schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Keep in mind though. Some of the data are self-reported by the students and, therefore, not very reliable

At our school, all of the Naviance data is entered by the College Counseling Office. My son didn't even really know what his GPA was because the school doesn't calculate them to share with students, but they had calculated it to enter into Naviance. The College Counselor also has access to SAT Subject Test scores on his view of the Scattergrams - that doesn't show on the Student/Parent view, but it's another very useful piece of information for him as he counsels students about where to apply.

But how do get the access to schools accepted/rejected/WL? Colleges don't report back to schools.

Good point. At our private school (the one with about 90 seniors) the College Counseling Office is in constant contact with the seniors about their decisions and knows pretty well about all the outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Does Naviance only use sample sizes from the school to whom it is licensed?

Naviance also has full admissions data for most schools (sometimes in even more detail than the Common Data Set provides, although it's unclear if it is always up to date). I think the high school specific data might be most useful when looking at the data for in-state public universities that have tons of applicants each year. For example, UVA might get 120+ applications per year, and the data goes back five years, so that's a pretty good sample. For my DC's school, you can see that most of the students accepted at schools like UVA, W&M, Tech etc. have very high GPAs (higher than what the schools report as the average GPA for all accepted applicants).

Based on Naviance, we know that DC is better off applying to OOS public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Keep in mind though. Some of the data are self-reported by the students and, therefore, not very reliable

At our school, all of the Naviance data is entered by the College Counseling Office. My son didn't even really know what his GPA was because the school doesn't calculate them to share with students, but they had calculated it to enter into Naviance. The College Counselor also has access to SAT Subject Test scores on his view of the Scattergrams - that doesn't show on the Student/Parent view, but it's another very useful piece of information for him as he counsels students about where to apply.

But how do get the access to schools accepted/rejected/WL? Colleges don't report back to schools.

Good point. At our private school (the one with about 90 seniors) the College Counseling Office is in constant contact with the seniors about their decisions and knows pretty well about all the outcomes.

For public schools with 500-600 kids, it's not possible to do what you describe. I think accept/reject data is the weakest link in the system for that particular reason. Down plays rejected/over plays accepted because kids are better entering the acceptance than rejected...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does Naviance only use sample sizes from the school to whom it is licensed?

Finding out that 4 students from last year's graduating class got into XYZ State University might be interesting, but how much can you really learn from such a small sample size?

You can get freshman profile data directly from the schools themselves.

I do appreciate that people using Naviance are at least savvy-enough not to just go by the "acceptance rate," which paints an incomplete picture.

In FCPS, you can only see data for the past five years for students at your school. However, for schools that have too little data to show (and they won't as it will indicate scores of the one who got in), the counselors and college advisor can look at the scattergrams for the whole county so you can see them if you go in an have a chat.

We found it most helpful for our DC to see what he needed to get into his target schools. One thing to remember is that it shows the GPA for the student for all fours years of HS and because GPAs tend to get better as they go along (mainly due to AP classes). For example, at the end of junior year, DC has a GPA of 3.78, he graduated with a 3.95. So it will record the 3.95. So, you can move the average admittance for most school (not the ones well above 4.0) up a few notches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Keep in mind though. Some of the data are self-reported by the students and, therefore, not very reliable

At our school, all of the Naviance data is entered by the College Counseling Office. My son didn't even really know what his GPA was because the school doesn't calculate them to share with students, but they had calculated it to enter into Naviance. The College Counselor also has access to SAT Subject Test scores on his view of the Scattergrams - that doesn't show on the Student/Parent view, but it's another very useful piece of information for him as he counsels students about where to apply.

But how do get the access to schools accepted/rejected/WL? Colleges don't report back to schools.

DC was asked where he was going and where he was admitted in the last quarter of school.

[Anonymous]

In a perfect world, I wish colleges would be so much more transparent about what it takes to be admitted. But I know they have a self-interest in making every kid believe it's possible to get in, to keep those applications coming.

For example, I just looked at the Naviance scattergrams from my kid's school (private, in Maryland).

Over the last 5 years, kids with stats of a 3.8 GPA and 1350 SAT (or higher) are 13 for 13 getting into UVA. 2 other kids with 1250+ and a 3.9+ got in. And everyone else - other than recruited athletes with far lower scores - was rejected.

At U of Maryland, of roughly 50 applicants with 1300+ SATs, all were accepted except for 2 - the 2 lowest GPAs, of 2.8 and 3.0. Of kids with a 3.5 GPA or higher, all were accepted except the one kid who had an 1120.

As a parent, I would much rather know this specific info, rather than broad generalities about middle 50th percentiles. It demystifies chatter like "Maryland is getting hard to get into" and lets you know that - from our school, at least - you need either a 1300 and a 3.1 GPA, or a 3.5 and 1150 SAT, to get into Maryland.

[Anonymous]

My DCs attended a high school known for tough grading, and only because of Naviance did I learn how to adjust their GPAs against the common data set info for different colleges. Obviously it's not perfect but it did help us find good matches that on paper looked more like reaches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In a perfect world, I wish colleges would be so much more transparent about what it takes to be admitted. But I know they have a self-interest in making every kid believe it's possible to get in, to keep those applications coming.

For example, I just looked at the Naviance scattergrams from my kid's school (private, in Maryland).

Over the last 5 years, kids with stats of a 3.8 GPA and 1350 SAT (or higher) are 13 for 13 getting into UVA. 2 other kids with 1250+ and a 3.9+ got in. And everyone else - other than recruited athletes with far lower scores - was rejected.

At U of Maryland, of roughly 50 applicants with 1300+ SATs, all were accepted except for 2 - the 2 lowest GPAs, of 2.8 and 3.0. Of kids with a 3.5 GPA or higher, all were accepted except the one kid who had an 1120.

As a parent, I would much rather know this specific info, rather than broad generalities about middle 50th percentiles. It demystifies chatter like "Maryland is getting hard to get into" and lets you know that - from our school, at least - you need either a 1300 and a 3.1 GPA, or a 3.5 and 1150 SAT, to get into Maryland.

This seems a simple case, but for private colleges it is much more mixed picture with many high scoring kids rejected and lower scoring kids accepted. There seem to be other factors in play that make the graphs hard to interpret. In your School's Navianceg graphs are recruited athletes, URMs and legacies designated differently?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Naviance can be very misleading because it's so narrowly focused on GPA and test scores. For all 3 of our kids, Naviance data suggested that they'd never get into the schools they ended up going to. According to the scattergram, they were beyond reaches. I'm not saying that Naviance data isn't helpful, but I'd caution folks from relying too heavily on it.

What was your hook?

No hooks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In a perfect world, I wish colleges would be so much more transparent about what it takes to be admitted. But I know they have a self-interest in making every kid believe it's possible to get in, to keep those applications coming.

For example, I just looked at the Naviance scattergrams from my kid's school (private, in Maryland).

Over the last 5 years, kids with stats of a 3.8 GPA and 1350 SAT (or higher) are 13 for 13 getting into UVA. 2 other kids with 1250+ and a 3.9+ got in. And everyone else - other than recruited athletes with far lower scores - was rejected.

At U of Maryland, of roughly 50 applicants with 1300+ SATs, all were accepted except for 2 - the 2 lowest GPAs, of 2.8 and 3.0. Of kids with a 3.5 GPA or higher, all were accepted except the one kid who had an 1120.

As a parent, I would much rather know this specific info, rather than broad generalities about middle 50th percentiles. It demystifies chatter like "Maryland is getting hard to get into" and lets you know that - from our school, at least - you need either a 1300 and a 3.1 GPA, or a 3.5 and 1150 SAT, to get into Maryland.

This seems a simple case, but for private colleges it is much more mixed picture with many high scoring kids rejected and lower scoring kids accepted. There seem to be other factors in play that make the graphs hard to interpret. In your School's Navianceg graphs are recruited athletes, URMs and legacies designated differently?

No - but in the case of the recruited athletes, the difference in the stats of the accepted students is strikingly apparent. It's not too hard to guess the identity of the guy with the 29 ACT and 3.3 GPA who got into Stanford when you know they've recruited one kid from the school during the 5-year period on the Scattergram. When there are clear outliers, I just disregard them, because they pretty clearly pertain to kids who have hooks that my kid doesn't.

[Anonymous]

If you're at a bigger public school that sends a decent number of kids to the top universities, and particularly after the 5-year averaging, it's pretty hard to tell who's who among the acceptees. As a result you can't always figure out which hooks were in play.

Moreover, hooks like sports, legacy and URM don't explain the whole story. State-level awards in music or the arts, or an Intel scholarship, maybe behind the acceptance.

For kids in big public schools, it's probably best to assume that the acceptees with really low scores had some kind of hook or talent. But that's the best you can do with guessing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous[b wrote:]In a perfect world, I wish colleges would be so much more transparent about what it takes to be admitted. But I know they have a self-interest in making every kid believe it's possible to get in, to keep those applications coming.[/b]

For example, I just looked at the Naviance scattergrams from my kid's school (private, in Maryland).

Over the last 5 years, kids with stats of a 3.8 GPA and 1350 SAT (or higher) are 13 for 13 getting into UVA. 2 other kids with 1250+ and a 3.9+ got in. And everyone else - other than recruited athletes with far lower scores - was rejected.

At U of Maryland, of roughly 50 applicants with 1300+ SATs, all were accepted except for 2 - the 2 lowest GPAs, of 2.8 and 3.0. Of kids with a 3.5 GPA or higher, all were accepted except the one kid who had an 1120.

As a parent, I would much rather know this specific info, rather than broad generalities about middle 50th percentiles. It demystifies chatter like "Maryland is getting hard to get into" and lets you know that - from our school, at least - you need either a 1300 and a 3.1 GPA, or a 3.5 and 1150 SAT, to get into Maryland.

Yes. This is an unfortunate side effect of the obsession with acceptance rates.

It is mind-boggling how many otherwise intelligent people allow themselves to be influenced by this easily manipulated metric.