Reply to Naviance Access, esp at GDS and Maret

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You won't know where your kid stands vis a vis others at GDS, except wrt rigor of schedule and maybe some individual course grades.  And you generally don't know who's applying where.

Also, the grading scale is sufficiently compressed that it's not clear how much of a point spread there is among the most academically-oriented students.  My guess is that letters of rec from teachers sort those kids out more than the second decimal place in their GPAs.  And that once schools are comparing kids whose SATs are over 2200, things like essays, academic interests, and extracurriculars make more difference than standardized test scores.  So, in the EA round, kids [b]with[/b] NMSF or Presidential Scholar nominations are in some cases passed over in favor of kids (including unhooked white kids who aren't athletes) whose scores were just under those thresholds but who looked more appealing to admissions officers.

At any rate, in a situation with limited info and where there are lots of well-qualified candidates, the net result, from what I've seen, has been for kids to focus on what they really want rather than to try to play the odds or game the system.  The other result is a certain amount of catty commentary (see above).  My take is Naviance would make things worse -- it models admissions decisionmaking badly and seems likely to feed a tyranny of small differences mentality.[/quote]

Our child is going into GDS next year as a 9th grader. Like the OP, we have other kids who've gone through the college admissions process at public schools with Naviance - the trade off being that the school's college counseling was not so helpful. One reason we liked GDS is because the college counseling would be better, but it sounds like the counselors are like gatekeepers who limit the students' choices. Is that true? How does the process work if we have no information as to how our kid stands vis-a-vis the admission statistics? With SCEA, EA and ED options and limitations in college admission, in some ways it is a game as you're forced to make choices about when and where you'll apply. Say, hypothetically, our kid wants to apply SCEA to Yale - will the counselor say, "I don't think Larla should do that" because she knows that Larla's numbers won't cut it? How does it work? [/quote]

Just noticed a typo in my earlier post -- now corrected in boldface.

We didn't experience any gate-keeping at GDS.  My kid had a tough (SC)EA choice to make among two legacy schools and another comparably selective university where DC had no hook.  Our GDS counselor's approach was very kid-centered, helping DC think through what was appealing about each school and why.  Premise was it's always a crapshoot with these schools, so follow your heart.  DC ultimately went with the unhooked school and got in. No pressure from the GDS to accept and withdraw apps elsewhere.  DC did that anyway, though a couple of similarly-situated friends did not and everyone seemed fine with that approach.  I hate the whole two-stage process, even though it worked out well for DC (done before Xmas and got first choice).  But the pressure to designate "the one" by Nov 1 isn't the GDS counselors' fault and I thought they handled the situation very well.  Counselor also indicated, early on, that it was a legit strategy for high stats kids to apply to more "lottery" schools (since their matches are inherently reaches) as long as they applied to safeties as well.  That didn't end up being DC's approach, but DH and I were reassured to hear upfront that apps wouldn't be strictly rationed according to some one-size-fits-all formula.

All that said, I've heard different stories involving other GDS counselors and kids, so YMMV. [/quote]

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