I think your school’s Naviance is more accurate than what people are posting here. Your kid will be read relative to his classmates, and then students from his area. Posters on CC are from all over US with their own school/region’s bias. What you need to exclude from your Naviance (if possible) are athletes, legacies and URMs. They will skew the result and possibly give you too rosy of a picture.
^ I’ve been discounting any green dots on the lower ends. or even outside the big clusters. They are probably lacross players, or bb or track…As for URM, no way to know, but would imagine not many as the school is pretty “pale”.
Matches and safeties are confusing! Generally, it is hard to call a safety any school that accepts fewer than 30% of applicants. Our rule of thumb was that nothing was a safety unless it accepted more than 30% of applicants and DS was in the top 75th percentile for unweighted GPA, SAT or ACT, and class rank. All three. We found this info on each school’s common data set (via Google search). We found Naviance pretty useless - many applicants from our high school were surprised last year when a few well regarded colleges that always accepted large numbers from our high school in the past didn’t do so.
I see. In that case, Id put Bing in the safety category as it takes more than 50%. Mich as a high match, under 30%, top 25%tile of stats. What I don’t have are class of 15 data. Do you know when they add that?
The closer we get, the harder it is.
Usually the CDS data lags one year.
Great… I guess we’ll know when we know!!! I’ve heard both Mich and NEU were tough this year.
Our Naviance was spot on as it related to my S’s endeavors. I guess it’s one of those YMMV situations. NEU was tough this year, esp from NY, NJ and MA, but I would say he has a good chance, esp if he shows interest and makes an effort with his rep.
I think naviance works if it’s two-three year data. Beyond that it’s may not be useful.
All we had was the last 2-3 yrs, depending on school.
Post #128, that’s. Why yours is spot on and others were not useful. Mine was 2 years and it was somewhat useful.
Oh my…I think I am just getting to caught up in it all! Is this about the right point in the cycle for the parent who is overly involved to butt out? Someone tell me to butt out:).
@HRSMom, LOOK AWAY FROM THE LIGHT!!!
@HRSMom – Reality check. Don’t butt out.
I got started here on CC when my S14 was finishing his junior year. We’d done a number of college tours, and with his college counselor at his fancy-pants private high school he’d put together a list of schools. But he’s a boy, so by definition he’s a bit of a knucklehead. He didn’t get fully engaged in the process until April of his senior year when he had a number of acceptances in hand, and we did a round of Admitted Students Days.
He just finished his freshman year at Emory, a school that he was not all that interested in during the application phase. In fact, I had to really ride him to get that application done (we’d set a deadline of the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend to have ALL of his applications completed). We went to Emory’s final (third of three) Admitted Students Day the third week in April. Within a couple of hours he had buddied up with a number of other boys, and he said to me, “This is where I’m going. I’ve never felt so confident of a decision in my life.” It has been a really good fit, and he had a wonderful freshman year.
The point is that if I’d butted out he never would’ve completed the Emory application. At that point in time he just couldn’t wrap his mind around the factors about the various schools that would really make a difference to him. He couldn’t differentiate between what he thought he wanted and what he actually wanted.
You’re doing your son a great service by turning over all sorts of rocks so that he applies to a good number of the ‘right’ schools, affording him some choices come April.
Keep us posted.
My nephew was the same as ^^^. He EA at the wrong place, got deferred and was discouraged. He also chose not to take the most rigorous courses in high school because he wanted more free time to hang out. The day before the deadline my sister decided to send his application to JHU. She did it with his permission, but it was more of “Sure, whatever mom.” He graduated from JHU and had 4 very good years there. He is getting married to a girl he met at JHU next year.
My older daughter also ended up at a school that wasn’t high on her list. She wanted an urban or warm weather school. But I knew in my gut that she would be happy at Cornell. I was the one who convinced her to apply there. In D1’s case, she didn’t have a very happy college process. At the end, she was so discouraged, I was the one that carried her to the end. I think if I have left it up to her she would have gone to a different school. She has thanked me many times for being there for her.
No, this is not the time to butt out. I wish your son best of luck to have this over and done with by Dec, but it could be a long year for you all.
Thanks! I’ll keep pushing, maybe less annoyingly…(is it possible not to annoy a 17 y o boy?)
LOL. I suggested my D visit a particular LAC on our New England tour becaue I thought it might be a good fit for her. We visited, she liked it, it wasn’t the top choice (that was a school where she’d done a couple of summer programs). When she was doing her apps she had a TON of supplements to write and, a bit burned out near the end, wanted to drop this one app because “she wasn’t going to get in anyway”. I encouraged her to persevere and sat with her while she worked on the prompts in a coffee shop one Sunday.
Lo and behold, this is the school she chose and will attend this fall. I am positive she wouldn’t have applied if I hadn’t suggested it and pushed her to finish the app. At the same time, if she’d come away from that visit saying she hated it, I’d have dropped it (as I did for the schools she DID say she hated). I let her lead and the choice in the end was completely hers (and she had several great options), but I did stay involved throughout. I think our balance was right.
Application season will be a grind, and I agree with OHMom that it’s all about balance, but only you can strike the right balance for your kid. Everytime my S started to lean towards lazy (I’m good, I have enough schools), I gently guided him back to ensure that we had the right balance of safeties and matches so he would have options (there was one reach, but I didn’t care so much about that, I wanted to ensure he had merit and admission options).
Once he had his results, we went back and toured the top 3, with the attitude that I would be there to point out pros and cons, but it would totally be his choice. I was not going to impose my own favorite. All three would have been good for him in similar and different ways, it was truly a no-lose situation. We went to all three and I would say going in, it was more like a top 2 with a sort-of-distant 3rd. He ended up going to the distant 3rd. Totally his choice in the end, but we guided him a lot during applications to get there.
So Naviance is up for 2015 for our school, and to update in the brutal school results:
Michigan: 13 admits down from 23. 10 less kids applied thi
Binghamton: 46 admits down from 54
Cornell holds steady at about 10