Reply to College Kick Start - Anyone heard of it?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "College Kick Start - Anyone heard of it?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Checking to see if anyone has heard anything about College Kickstart or has experience with it. 
Our HS (non-DC pvt school) is using this as a tool for college counseling. Our HS College Counselor shared a report that ranks colleges into likely category and grades DS college list (got a C+). Would love to hear of others experience with this tool/ appreciate any feedback.

[/quote]

Kickstart probably thinks you are overly optimistic in your choices by having too many reaches or unlikelies.  Even if your DC is 4.0 uw / 1500+, every top 20 is unlikely.  My DS uses Kickstart along with Naviance (as do his counselors).  He has an A+ grade with 16 or 18 colleges.  1 unlikely, 2 reaches.  The rest are targets and safeties.  Yes, we know admissions are less predictable than that, and he might not get into some of the ones we expect he will.  But we are generally building his list from the bottom up.  Started with his criteria (healthy mix of genders, generally smaller to mid-size colleges within a day’s drive of home, with a liberal arts-style curriculum, smaller class sizes, generally pretty close to cities or good size towns).  Looked at colleges from his HS class profiles that matched these to see where a decent number kids have been admitted from his school (which is a small, rigorous private where they tend to send kids to a fairly concentrated group of colleges), along with conversations with his CCO about a handful of others, and then narrowed down based on his GPA/test scores from Naviance/Kickstart.  From that the goal has been to identify 8-10 schools we think he’s either very likely to get into or more likely than not, and that he could feel excited to attend.  Have been visiting those first.  If his SAT increases and his junior year grades are on track, maybe look at some slightly more selective schools in the fall, but only after he’s found enough to be excited about in the first category.  Notice at no point did any reference to published rankings factor into making the lists, despite the cries of some here that they are to essential to help narrow the field of 3,000 colleges.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics