Does anyone know if there will be changed to Naviance with the new SAT scoring? Naviance is helpful to compare your son/daughter to others who have applied / been accepted to universities. But, it’s not 2400 on the SAT any more… or even 1600 for that matter. Does it mean that for the next couple of years Naviance will be largely unhelpful for SAT takers? Hard to compare student to student.
That’s a great question. I used Naviance extensively to help my son (a high school senior) create his college list. He applied to 9 schools, he’s heard back from 6, all acceptances. So I tihink Naviance definitely helped us go in with our eyes wide open in terms of picking schools to which he had a reasonable chance of being admitted. My daughter is a high school sophomore so if she takes the SAT it will be the new version. I hope that I’ll be able to continue to use Naviance in some way to develop her college list. I guess the same question applies to Common Data set data. It will be difficult to use past year’s admissions data to evaluate your own child’s fit academically for that particular school as it relates to the SAT scoring.
My guess (and it is only a guess) is that Naviance will continue with the 1600 option only. Collegeboard reports there will be concordance tables to compare the old and new SATs. I wonder if Naviance will provide an option to differentiate between new and old SAT scores. Since is usually a range in scores on applicants to most schools, the SAT range for that school may not change all that much (using the 1600 range). Good luck with the new SAT.
My son is a junior and we are still waiting for the colleges tab to open up (they told us it would be available in December, but with the PSAT score delay, its still not available).
On the ‘my scores’ tab, it shows:
Highest combined SAT (1600 scale):
Highest combined SAT (2400 scale):
Highest PSAT (before Oct 2015):
PSAT
So I think they will show both - even on the scattergram charts. They will give the option to plot either one.
In January, the college counselor at my son’s high school told me that Naviance targeted the end of January to change the Super Match search function to 1600. This is February. Hasn’t happened yet. One college admissions officer told me that the best advice that she could give is to use the ACT score in the search engines. Obviously, if your child hasn’t taken the ACT yet, he/she would need to do that, or, I suppose, you could use the Old SAT/ACT concordance tables and estimate an ACT score for SuperMatch search purposes. The College Board website says that they will produce the concordance table between the old and new SAT in May. In my view, that is not much help if you are trying to squeeze in a few realistic college visits between now and May.
There is a preliminary concordance table that compares the old PSAT to the new PSAT. This is somewhat helpful in comparing the old SAT and new SAT numbers because the you can somewhat project the PSAT to SAT scores. I heard that the College Board will not release the finalized table for the PSAT or any SAT comparative information until approximately May 2016. The reason for this has to do with wanting actual SAT results from multiple test dates. Until then, I don’t believe that Naviance can be modified because there’s no way to compare the old to the new. I completely agree with you; all that SAT data in Naviance is pretty useless to those of us with kids who will be 2017 graduates. Here’s a link to the preliminary concordance table if you want to try to guesstimate: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/psat-nmsqt-preliminary-concordance-tables-2015.pdf
A bit off-topic from the original question (which is an interesting one, and I had not even thought of it), but my issue with Naviance is that it includes both the ACT & SAT scores for a specific student, even though that student may have only submitted ACT scores to a college. In other words, let’s suppose the student scored 2000 on SAT but a 33 on ACT. (I heard several instances of this when my older son’s friends were taking the test a couple of years ago.)
Both of those scores will appear as accepted data points under SAT & ACT, even though the student only submitted the much better 33 ACT score. Anyone viewing the scattergram would think that a 2000 SAT earned a student admission to the college in question, when in reality, the college only saw the 33 ACT.
@CT1417 Good point. Would also apply to score optional schools and may be misleading. Best to have your gc explain what’s behind the numbers for the schools you are interested in, so you don’t walk away thinking a 27 ACT is gonna get you into Bowdoin!
@wisteria100 – unfortunately our GC will not explain what is behind the #s…will claim privacy issues, etc. They block the scattergrams when there are only a few acceptances as it would be easy enough to ID the students.
We have a lot of athletic recruits from our HS so that really skews the #s downward. It is what it is…
@CT1417 Same experience with my son at my son’s school- kids with 35/36 ACT and 2000/2100 SAT. Unfortunately Naviance does not have a ‘higher of’ function with an integrated concordance table. That would be a useful improvement especially for the ultra selective schools where admissions seem quite randomly placed in the upper quadrant. Naviance also has many ‘insufficient data points to protect privacy’ as well which limits its usefulness.
My gc also protects privacy, but she can point out when a score was not submitted or when an out of range score for an acceptance came from a legacy/hooked student. That kind of info is helpful, though you can drive yourself crazy with all the numbers. On the converse she has also explained very high numbers at certain schools as lots if kids using that school as a safety. That’s helpful too.
I will admit that, when I posted this question, I thought the new PSAT scoring would be the same as the New SAT scoring. So, that was the question at the time. Since it is not so, I still think the Class of 2017 is hosed is trying to figure out where they compare to previous students at their school. Our school still hasn’t uploaded the 2015 PSAT score.
I am wondering about people comments about data on the “ACT & SAT”. Are you talking about the Scattergrams? Or another chart? Our scattergrams are separate for SAT 1600, SAT 2400 and ACT. So, I’m wondering if you are looking at something else in Naviance. TIA.
@phoenixmomof2 – I am talking about the scattergrams and yes, there are different charts for ACT, SAT 1600 & 2400, but the charts pull from the actual student data. So…if a student took both the SAT & ACT and performed widely differently on those two exams, Naviance will still pull the data for both exams even though the student only submitted the scores from one. (Here I am ignoring the eight or ten schools that require reporting all testing history.)
In other words, it will look as though student A with GPA of 3.7 and ACT of 33/SAT of 1990 was admitted to Richmond when in reality, Richmond never saw that 1990, but to anyone viewing the SAT 2400 chart, it appears there was a Richmond admit with 3.7 & 1990 SAT.
Our school also has not loaded the PSAT scores but that doesn’t bother me since they do not have any bearing on admission.
@CT1417 That is an interesting point. My DD took the SATs several times and the ACT once and only submitted her ACT score. This was several years ago. When I look in Naviance, I only see her ACT score for the school she went to. The SAT score is definitely not there.
@CT1417 I tried to edit my prior post and could not. Just checked again and it is very possible that my DD’s SAT scores are in Naviance. This is something I never knew and I bet it does alter Naviance results for lots of kids and lots of schools. So strange.
Naviance is a great tool, but it has a lot of weaknesses. In addition to the issues regarding testing described above, and the issues regarding hooks and safeties, there’s also a problem in that – at D’s school at least – the GPA figures are unweighted, so you have no idea if a 3.7 is with mostly regular courses, mostly honors courses, or mostly AP courses. That’s got to make a big difference. There are so many flaws with the tool that the discrepancy between old and new SAT scores is just one more. Kudos to the GCs who are willing and able to go deep to describe hooks and exceptions, etc. I don’t think D’s GC is particularly inclined to do that. Then again, I’m not sure I blame him – it’s an art more than a science and there are many additional variables.
@SoccerMomGenie – and to keep things interesting…Our school loads weighted GPAs into Naviance.
Each HS decides which features of Naviance they wish to use. I have sat with friends from other schools while they logged in and some have scattergrams that provide many more types of data points. (I can’t recall the categories now but they went beyond accepted, rejected and deferred.) Our Naviance includes a chart that I find very helpful but some schools do not offer. Naviance calls it School Stats and it shows the avg applied ED & RD, and lowest accepted & avg accepted, ED & RD, in addition to the # of RD & ED apps & admits.
Our school finally dropped the 2008 data and now includes history back to 2010, but that is still fairly out of date in this changed landscape of college admissions, and not just at University of Chicago.
Our GCs collect the data by having the graduating seniors fill out a sheet with their application results. This takes place during the last homeroom before they all head off for their internships. So, not exactly accurate and probably not updated for movement off the wait lists.
Nonetheless, when I knew nothing, it was an indispensable tool. I think it is of less use at the very high end as that is all a crap shoot anyway.
My son took the old SAT last fall, so I am just going to pretend that the colleges will view his scores the way they viewed the class of 2015’s scores.
Very interesting point. When helping my senior choose target schools we found naviance very useful. . My only complaint is that the data goes to far back( 10 years). Many schools are now much more competitive today. One school in particular Northeastern has made huge leaps in SAT. ACT stats in the past few years. I wish there was a way for the user to modify the data as needed but I think it is up to the school.
Sample size is way too small. For state schools, and colleges where students from a high school commonly apply, I say that three years should be enough to change. However, for the more selective LACs and Ivies, I think that Naviance data will take longer to compile. Just my thoughts though. I’d be interesting to hear how it works out.
Has anyone heard how the new redesigned SAT will be reported in Naviance? or do we have to keep looking at concordance tables and convert the scores ourself? As of now, my school has options of ACT, 2400 & 1600. Clearly if they drop new SAT score into the 1600 graph it is not apples to apples with old SAT and can be very misleading.