Anyone have weird things happening with Naviance? It might just be our high school. There is data for a few colleges for the class of 2020 but it’s incomplete and Rice seems to have disappeared completely, like it doesn’t exist.
Edit: if anyone is interested in Rice, their website now says they will consider subject tests but are no longer recommending them. Plus: “As has always been our practice, students who are only able to take an assessment once will not be at a disadvantage.” Not sure how to interpret that.
@evergreen5 yes. Naviance has seemed odd for over a week now. Info doesn’t look correct anymore. When I look at S19’s check mark it’s not even correct anymore and the totals aren’t correct either. Shows no one accepted to Bowdoin his year. It also just keeps flashing and I can’t seem to switch back and forth between SAT and ACT without the screen going haywire. Maybe they are doing an update? Or updating this year’s graduates and it’s messed up until they finalize that?
re #5545:
“The handful of kids from our school at Cornell all love it.”
My kid had a great experience there too. Not just socially; The work she did there (both classes and extracurriculars)paved the way for her (successful)work life since graduating.
But like most places it has its better aspects and its less wonderful aspects, which people may variously weigh. There are those who love it, dislike it, and everything in between, depending on their weighting.
Me, I liked it there when I was doing well academically and socially. and didn’t like it there when I wasn’t. My daughter is both more social and smarter than I am, so she liked it more of the time.
@evergreen5 Thanks for starting this conversation. As we are unable to visit, word of mouth information is very useful.
@Aguadecoco Have you heard anything about stress culture at Cornell? I have heard that it’s sort of a point of pride to complain about how busy and overworked you are. It’s not so much students competing with one another about grades but competing with themselves to see how much they can pack in?
What do people know about Vandy these days? I know that it’s striving to become more diverse in many ways and is trying to move away from a predominantly Southern preppy/Greek image. How far has it moved in new directions and would a left-leaning, intellectually nerdy kid find like-minded classmates there?
@homerdog and others…just got my copy of “Write Your Way In” yesterday and am enjoying it! I purchased used on amazon for a few dollars cheaper than new…and the book looks new. I plan on reading it today and hoping D will want to read too.
@mamaedefamilia They said that is mostly with kids studying in STEM fields. The kids I know there are studying humanities and it doesn’t sound stressful. They work hard in their classes but still have time to have fun and enjoy the outdoors and the snow.
Its helpful hearing opinions on Cornell and Vandy as those are two (reach) schools that S21 is interested in. He will likely be in a STEM type major, but he’s also very social, loves the outdoors, is interested in Greek life and wants new experiences. Trying to find some match and safety schools is our current challenge!
That’s interesting he found Richmond not to be social enough. I only have one piece of anecdotal experience on Richmond. We know a kid very well, extremely smart (top of his class at Regis, a very rigorous h.s. in NYC) who transferred out of Richmond b/c his social life was a little, uh, too much, and he was worried it was going to cause his academics to suffer. He ended up going to a service academy, quite the opposite extreme! However, he never lost touch with his friends he made there, continued to visit them occasionally while in college when he had a rare weekend off. They all came to his graduation from the Academy where he again graduated near the top of his class. He graduated a couple of years ago though so not sure if anything has changed. Our neighbor’s daughter just finished her freshman year at Richmond where she was a recruited athlete. I haven’t seen her but from what I’ve heard, she liked for the short time she was on campus.
@inthegarden We visited F&M in the fall on a short LAC tour of some PA schools. (It was actually my runner up, back in the day!) It’s a beautiful campus, the tour guide was fun and upbeat, and the president even stopped us to say hello as we were touring. It didn’t make D’s list, mostly because it seemed to have a fairly strong athletics and party (maybe Greek?) culture. Her first impression as we drove onto campus was of the massive football field. D doesn’t care AT ALL about sports, so it turned her off. (Who knows what she would have thought if we’d entered from the other side of campus! She also liked the other places she saw that weekend better. (To give some “fit” context, quirky, tiny Bryn Mawr was by far her fave of the trip.) Still, for a kid who likes LACs with more of a “rah rah” feel, I think F&M has a lot going for it.
@evergreen5@homerdog Our Naviance has been wacky for at least a month. I’m not sure if it’s a system upgrade or something, but it’s not right!
We did online info session and tour for USC (CA) yesterday and my kid is in love. She’d have to get hefty NMF associated merit for it to make sense, but she has a better shot at that than us affording UCLA. Watched ASU/Barrett today and I thought the sessions were great but per D21, “it’s OK”.
Next week is LAC week with Bryn Mawr and Mount Holyoke sessions. Will also look at UMASS and UMDCP recorded ones.
We are still hoping Boston College and Vanderbilt go TO. I get that not submitting a test isn’t always the best way to go but, if either of these go TO, that might change things a bit for D21.
Or who knows? Maybe she’ll get to take an SAT and will rock it. That might change things too.
I do think it’s interesting that these two schools are basically silent on the TO issue. It’s hard to ignore that D21’s unweighted and weighted gpa (which shows her rigor) are in the ballpark for Vandy but she’d likely be out of range for an SAT score. Most accepted here are above 1520…or they are legacy.
@homerdog It would seem pretty likely following College Board’s request that they do so, though maybe they’re holding out for another month to see what’s going to happen with high schools opening their buildings. Or maybe they’re just trying to figure out how that would alter their process before they pull the trigger. Just thinking out loud, those with scores in the bottom 25th percentile presumably wouldn’t submit. On the other hand, colleges’ score ranges might increase under TO. Vandy has long struck me as strongly seeking high scores.
The 2021-22 Common Data Sets will be interesting with so many TO schools, though that’s a long way off. Still waiting for a few 2019-20s to be posted (WashU).
Evergreen D18 looked at among others BC, Georgetown, Duke and Vandy. My D 21 loved Vandy and the vibe there. BC was next on the list and GT and Duke were last. She also looked at Villanova which she liked. However when it came down to it as full pay we/she didn’t feel that Nova and BC are worth the 70K or so and GT and Duke weren’t even considerations. Vandy really nice campus, nice size, all the kids we interacted with were friendly and seemed to love it there. Also a great town in Nashville.
Unfortunately we did not have Vandy on the list until November of her senior year and did not visit Vandy until December. So for a school that really weighs interest as they try to keep up yield she was behind the 8 ball. This is a school that if you really want to get in and attend you need to go ED. They fill a huge portion of the class with ED. Plus she was too late to apply for any merit scholarships. She did get wait listed but decided to just take her spot in the Clemson honors college.
She liked the vibe so much that is she looking Law school or graduate school there.
@burghdad band at NU is awesome. Those kids find their people right away and have a ton of fun
As for Vandy, they say they don’t take interest into account but then they love ED which is obviously about interest. And yes they love high scores. At our high school, a high score and ED is guaranteed acceptance in the last four years.
My D18 considered Cornell pretty seriously and I have a friend with two daughters there. We enjoyed the tour – it’s a pretty campus though we found it very spread out. I think, however, depending what school you’re in, you likely have most your classes in on part of the campus. We had coffee with my friend’s daughter and she confirmed Cornell’s reputation for being really tough academically.
We were there in late March and there was a bit of snow on the ground which, being from NC, my daughter found a bit alarming, lol. Ithaca is very cute.
My D was interested in very specialized program in CALS, but ultimately realized that Cornell would be a better potential match for her for grad school. Also, it was by far the largest private school we looked at and once she got into the honors program at UNC (which is about the same size as Cornell) she realized she’d choose that over a much more costly private that’s just as large. She ended up WL at Cornell anyway and declined staying on it.
I think someone asked about Duke. We have love/hate relationship with it in our household. It’s def. a very social school with amazing resources and some really great students. We know a lot of kids there and they seem to really like it.
I think it has some odd social dynamics which I don’t feel comfortable posting but anyone who wants to know my two cents, feel free to PM me. Like a lot of top schools, Duke seems to have has some grade inflation – we know a cute couple from our local HS where one went to UNC and the other Duke (both got full rides!), and both majored in bio. As they compared notes over four years they agreed UNC was academically more difficult.
D attended a Davidson presentation yesterday with a Dean of Admission, a current Jr and 4 kids. She was not prepared to have an open camera, as none of the others have been. Two of the kids did, thankfully the other, like her, did not. The current student was a self proclaimed “orchestra nerd” and used the adjective “nerdy” several other times. to answer questions about the student body. This totally turned my D off (she is crazy bright, but anything but a stereotypical “nerd”). I told her we need to attend a few more things, as she can’t let this one student dictate to her the vibe of an entire campus.
So, those who have toured Davidson- is "nerdy" accurate?
@burghdad If we could pick your brain, could you further characterize the vibe at Vandy? and/or compare and contrast with any of the others you mentioned, NU or BC/Villanova? I am already familiar with BC if that helps. Would Vandy be more like NU, more like BC/Villanova, or sort of in between?
@Rue4 we’ve toured Davidson. It was one of S19’s final choices. I would say kids are serious students but we didn’t get a nerdy vibe. We were comparing it to places like Carleton and U Chicago as those are the two schools we visited where we thought the kids were pretty nerdy. Davidson kids were smart and friendly. We have heard it’s rigorous. Not sure it’s any more rigorous than other schools S19 looked at though.
D21 visited back when we took S19. Our tour guide was super energetic and friendly. D21 also did the virtual info session and also did not turn on her camera but really liked the student who was on her call. She was a political science student from CA. They also do a “live” tour where students do the virtual tour with the kids online and add a bunch of good info and prospective students can ask questions. D thought that was terrific. Maybe see if you can sign up for one of those.
Nerdy is all relative of course. I wouldn’t call Bowdoin kids nerdy but S had a Bowdoin friend here recently and, when they were making spaghetti, I overheard them discussing how you can’t break the dry spaghetti exactly in half and the friend was describing why using some physics law. Nerdy? I don’t know. But that kid is also outdoorsy and friendly and fun. If you think that discussion is kind of nerdy then I think Davidson kids might be that kind of nerdy. More like curious and interesting nerdy, not antisocial nerdy.