@momofmrb - I suppose that could be a possibility, but how would anyone know it was her (except us because we know her stats) and if that is the case they haven’t done a very good job of hiding her in the stats for several schools where she apparently was the only person who applied early admission because it is clearly her as the lowest accepted “average” GPA, SAT/ACT score as I doubt the “average” averages out to her exact stats, lol. And they could protect the “stats” and at least list that someone as applied and if they were accepted/denied/waitlisted.
@labegg Well, I guess what I was trying to allude to was that if your daughter was the only one to apply to a school, and other folks know she was applying to the school, and her stats showed up, then everyone would know her stats. As far as the EA snafu, if you’re saying she’s identifiable because other folks know she applied EA, and she’s the only EA candidate ever at that school, I’m guessing the secretary who inputs it didn’t think the privacy thing through completely?
@labegg actually, if your D is the only one to EVER apply to a certain college from her HS, then it will average out to her exact stats at the end. It happened with me at Pitt-Johnstown.
@momofmrb - could be, lol. I see what you are saying. As an aside the HS College Center counselor said that they (or the school district) does not input the info but that Naviance sorts and inputs the info from the stduents Naviance account. Of course she could have been trying to shift the blame…who knows. I am sorry I didn’t mean to seem like I was going off on you. I just get ruffled on CC with the common response of “use Naviance” as if it is the holy grail of info, that has not been the case for us so I always feel compelled to place a caveat on that bit of advice.
For our school district/school - SAT/ACT reporting is supposedly done in batch from SAT/ACT and released by the school district. Our school district says it releases the batch info to Naviance for SAT/ACt scores twice a year at the end of June and the end of December. Although again not exactly clear on that actually being the case, D16 took ACT for the 2nd time in September of this year and that score has not shown up in Naviance. D18 took PSAT in October and that score has shown up. So again, not consistent reporting.
Bottom line for our family is that Naviance is not entirely reliable(or the people inputing data) Also the stats for our school district are somewhat skewed… in that usually the kids applying to out of state colleges generally have higher stats, for whatever reason, So D16 was WAY in the “red” zone in comparison to her classmates but actually feel within the 25% - 75% zone when compared to national average. If we had simply relied on the her stats compared to her classmates D16 should not have even bothered to apply to 50% pf her schools.
I have found Naviance to be no better (or worse, really) than any other college info service/site. We did use the national average stats for D16 and more specifically Common Data Set stats once we had things more narrowed down, that is the system that worked for us. I suspect for those on the east coast, looking at mainly east coast schools or “top tier” or even “popular” schools. the information on Naviance is more accurate and reliable. For a kid from Texas applying out of state to mainly upper mid west and east coast school Naviance was just a place to start tracking down schools, we could just have easily used College Navigator/Parchment or something similar.
In our district Navaince does not list any data for a college if not enough students apply. I hardly used Navaince at all for my D who applied mostly to small LACs, some of which were hardly known in our area.
^^ That was our experience as well, @Lindagaf. Naviance was useless for small LACs outside our state. D was the first and only to apply to several of her schools. Actually Naviance is pretty useless for most universities and colleges outside our state.
@TomSrOfBoston our HS puts both scores into Naviance- ACT and SAT. If somebody has a 4.4 GPA with a 2300 SAT and a 30 ACT, it is very easy to think the 30/4.4 got accepted because there is no way to tell that it is linked to the 2300. I have been questioning that for awhile. My nephew had a 4.5 with a 35 ACT and a 2050 on the SAT. If you did not know both scores were for the same kid, you would think he got in with a 2050.
I honestly don’t know how the outcome data gets in to Naviance. I assumed it was one of the guidance secretaries, as the kids are told to email them their acceptances, etc. Seems like this is ripe for error, as my son wasn’t asked to prove any of his acceptances. Someone trying to be a hotshot could certainly lie, at least in my town, and get away with it.
SAT’s probably came from the College Board, and GPA’s come from the school itself. That was all already in there by the first time we accessed it.
@twogirls That explains why so many students post here on CC that they were not admitted to school while students with lower scores were admitted. Could also lead to more “hail Mary” applications.
At our HS the kids themselves are responsible for updating naviance - the guidance counselors send out many reminders over the spring to do so.
In our HS the kids tell the guidance counselors about their acceptances, rejections, wait lists, etc. Guidance updates Naviance. I found my daughter on the page that shows ACT scores and then on the page that shows SAT scores. In her case the two scores were not very different, but there are some cases where there are big differences.
Our Naviance data was updated last year to reflect decisions from 2012-2015. Within that 4 year period there was a Rice acceptance with a 21 on the ACT (forgot what the GPA). I assume that the same student is linked to a much higher SAT score. Our HS rarely sends kids to Rice.
I’m not so quick to assume the Rice acceptance was due to a much higher SAT score.
I have a kid who will make people wonder when they look at Naviance’s lonely green dot way over to the left and far below anyone else who had been accepted, SAT and ACT. The explanation is ECs and a strong focus on a fairly obscure major.
It could be that the ACT score was a fluke due to a migraine, or it could be something else. I am curious but will never know…
In my high school, students themselves would update their admissions results. I updated mine as I went along with each acceptance or denial. I’m assuming most others did the same; even if some didn’t, we were ALL prompted at the end to put in our results as well as our chosen school.
Kids in our school are supposed to enter outcomes but many do not. one of my friends is a teacher and his school they don’t allow kids to graduate until naviance has been updated. I’ve suggested this approach to our guidance office with no success (although they do now send multiple emails/reminders).
I do think naviance has a cache of very interesting data that could be mined.
At our school, Naviance does not post stats unless more than a certain number (5 maybe?) of students have applied in the last five years. It is done to protect student privacy.
However, it does appear that it reports both ACT and SATs, even if only one of those was actually used in the application. My son tried the ACT and did not do any better than on the SAT so did not use those scores, but the ACT scores show up on the scattergram. That could definitely be misleading. I also don’t think it shows stats for kids that applied but withdrew their applications (if they got in ED somewhere), although the number of applications includes those.
The other issue with Naviance is that it shows the last five years. For some schools, the admittance rates have changed a lot in that time. Overall, I thought it was a good tool for paring down the list and being realistic about chances. At most competitive schools, there are always stray acceptances or denials that don’t fit the pattern.
By the OPdefinition of “I meant not top 20…”, one thing that I noticed at our school is that the average ACT of admits for every top 50 college is now 30 or higher. That is new.
Wouldn’t Naviance plots also be misleading at schools with different selectivity by division or major (e.g. CMU, NYU, Cornell, Penn, Columbia, and many state flagship universities)?
Of course, that could be mitigated by having separate Naviance plots for different divisions or majors (e.g. CMU SCS, CMU CIT, CMU MCS, CMU DC), but then that could result in the problem of too small a sample size, which has issues with both meaningfulness and privacy.