Naviance Scattergrams

Applying to College
1

I’ve been looking at the GPA vs ACT scattergram on Naviance for the UC’s and a few out of state schools and I have been wondering, are the GPA’s reported on University of California schools’ scattergrams the UC GPA (10-12, 8 honors/AP class max) or the 9-12 cumulative GPA? The GPA that I have on my Naviance profile is the 9-12 GPA, and when I look at the scattergram for the UC’s and compare it to my Naviance profile GPA, it seems like I am way under the acceptance area. My UC GPA, however, is right on the acceptance area for most UC schools. Should I ignore the GPA on my profile and just use my UC GPA when comparing it with the scattergrams, or am I screwed? :S

2

I thought the Naviance scattergram was for students at the same high school as you with the GPA calculated the same way. It has nothing to do with UC GPA.

3

Naviance is for the people at your high school with whatever grading system your high school uses. That’s why some of them can be misleading. Personally, I hate them anyways.

4

The naviance scattergram shows the applied/accepted stats of students from your school based on your school’s grading system. Therefore you would use your 9-12 GPA to compare to others on the scattergram. I would use that for a better insight into your chances than the average UC GPA accepted for each school because the UC’s will have a general sense of the rigor of your high school and the kind of applicants that apply to UC’s each year.

5

Naviance scattergrams are probably the most accurate assessment of your admission chances you will find, especially at universities like the UC’s which are data driven. There are some limits:

  1. They are backward looking. Your chance at Cal/UCLA is probably less than the scatter gram will indicate because the datapoints start in 2008 or so and Cal is much more difficult to be admitted to now - more applicants and more OOS students as a % of student body.
  2. There is a lot of noise if there is a lot of variance in 9th grade marks. UC cares about 10th+11th only.
  3. No capture of honors or AP GPA if your school does not give a boost for taking those classes.
  4. For holistic admission universities accuracy becomes a lot less. Same if your HS sends many athletes to the UC's.
  5. You get a much more spread out scattergram because ACT and SAT score do not always synchronize. If a students ACT score is 36 and SAT is 1850, your SAT/GPA scattergram might show admission at, say 3.7 GPA and 1850 SAT. This tends to stretch the admitted area more to the left than you would think.
  6. There are different admission standards at different colleges within each UC but they are rolled into one average.

Best use is to discard the bottom 25-50% of SAT/ACT scores. The center of mass and greater is the safe area >= the accepted average.

6
  1. The data may be wrong. As my middle son is looking at colleges, I looked at the Naviance data for colleges my older son applied to. His dot wasn't on any of the graphs, and I know his applications/acceptances were reported to his high school
7

The GPA in the Naviance scattergram is whatever the guidance counselor decided to input. You should be able to figure out if it’s the UC GPA or not. I think Naviance is a great resource. You can often tell if grades or scores seem more important to a college. If no one below a certain GPA or SAT score has ever been accepted you can pretty much figure that if your score is at that line - it’s a super reach. Don’t count on holistic admissions to carry you over. All the students applying to colleges have other things that they can bring to the table. They may do things outside of school you don’t know about - or they may be acceptionally good at presenting themselves. Remember that the outliers are just that - in our school usually both URM and recruited athletes. Sometimes the odd development candidate.

8

Naviance is only as good as the data your classmates or GCs bothered to enter. Useful for putting your stats in the context of your school, which really does matter, but still limited.

9

The HS guidance can choose what years to include. It should say on the scattergram. If yours goes back to 2008 you should ask the guidance office to only include the last 2-4 years.