Naviance Experience

[Anonymous]

How much confidence did you/DCs put in Naviance? I know it's just a tool and I don't want to rely on the information too much but I also don't want to stress unnecessarily. If your family made choices based on the data, did it work out for DCs? Any cautionary tales to share?

[Anonymous]

When you look at the weighted GPAs shown for your high school, make sure you understand when those GPAs were posted. At my daughter's HS, they are final GPAs which include senior year grades and multiple APs. In the fall of senior year, her weighted GPA looked low when comparing to Naviance...until we realized that her GPA in Naviance only covered the end of junior year.

I believe each guidance dept can choose how/when they post Naviance GPA...so you need to understand your specific school.

[Anonymous]

Yes, you really have to understand your specific school's data in Naviance and what you might find if you look harder.

For example, the plots that first come up for our school first do not use weighted GPA at all, just unweighted.

Thanks to the previous poster, I am about to going looking for weighted GPA plots.

[Anonymous]

Do most colleges look for weighted gpas or unweighted? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do most colleges look for weighted gpas or unweighted? Thanks.

Because every HS weights differently, some colleges will do their own weighting based on the transcript. And they might only consider academic subjects in their calculation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you really have to understand your specific school's data in Naviance and what you might find if you look harder.

For example, the plots that first come up for our school first do not use weighted GPA at all, just unweighted.

Thanks to the previous poster, I am about to going looking for weighted GPA plots.

To find out about when the GPAs were posted, I had to email the guidance counselor. I could not find that information just by poking around Naviance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How much confidence did you/DCs put in Naviance? I know it's just a tool and I don't want to rely on the information too much but I also don't want to stress unnecessarily. If your family made choices based on the data, did it work out for DCs? Any cautionary tales to share?

For the schools where there is quite a bit of activity (in state schools mainly), we found Naviance to be very helpful. This is important as those stats vary from HS to HS and the gross stats from the university are not as helpful. For the ones where only a handful apply - there isn't enough data, but in FCPS you can go into the guidance department and they can show you the stats for the whole county and that can give you and idea, for the high end elite the gross stats from the college/university are more helpful.

I agree that you have to factor in a bump for senior year if your child is taking more APs.

We also found Naviance to be helpful in the initial search. Look at one school- and it gives you other the other common schools that other students applied to the that applied to the first school. The short paragraph describing the school were also helpful.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. Not knowing what to even think/ask about regarding Naviance/college stats seems like it could be a huge issue as to how well your Naviance predictions turn out.

"To find out about when the GPAs were posted, I had to email the guidance counselor. I could not find that information just by poking around Naviance."

[Anonymous]

For a lot of HS, accepts/rejects are self-reported. Students do a much better job reporting accepts than reporting rejects so keep that in mind too.

[Anonymous]

Naviance also won't tell you if acceptances were legacies or sports recruits. This can throw off the numbers I think

[Anonymous]

Naviance just put out an update that I think is an improvement. I used to get very frustrated by the automatic red- and green-lighting of stats. Now it uses a barometer for the different elements. It's a little thing but I think it promotes the fact that there are numbers below the averages that are still competitive. (That's why they're averages!)

[Anonymous]

It can't tell you anything about the curriculum the students took, which is a bit of an issue at some schools where Honors and APs are weighted similarly.

[Anonymous]

Does Naviance give you data for each graduating class or does it average a few years together?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does Naviance give you data for each graduating class or does it average a few years together?

The acceptance rate data is per class. The scattergrams throw all classes on the same plot.

[Anonymous]

DC attended a small school populated with many hooked students. Naviance was useless in that environment.