It seems that there are varying levels of service provided by the site. If you go to the Naviance website, you’ll see there are solutions for different levels of education, and within each of the levels there are tools. There are really 2 'views" or capabilities of the application that appear to be separate.
The system is primarily sold to schools as a way to simplify administration. In looking at the “colleges I’m applying to” page, they have information like application type (ED, RD, etc), application method (Common app, direct), deadlines, status of submissions from the office, the result of the application if known (ie accepted, waitlist). and links to other data.
There is also an area for research. WIthin that section, each school has:
- an overview,
- studies (student faculty ratios, retention and graduation rates, areas of study)
- student life (school size, nearest city, distance from your HS, % living on campus, ethnic diversity, gender, etc.)
- Admissions (SAT/ACT median and ranges, acceptance rate, dates, app fee)
- costs (average net price, % receiving aid, etc)
It’s definitely a resource that saves some time looking up schools, but there isn’t anything on Naviance that you can’t get elsewhere…except the scattergrams.
The scattergrams plot your schools success in applying to various schools. If your school doesn’t have enough applications to maintain anonymity, the chart will appear blank. Our school uses 5 years of data, and it shows the acceptances and rejections plotted on an XY axis with GPA on one axis and test score on another. You can select different tests in a drop down box to rebuild the chart (ACT vs. SAT). If a test doesn’t have a lot of takers, no chart.
The charts have serious limitations and only provide very theoretical guidance. Factors like legacy, URM, ED vs RD, athlete, programs applied for, etc. don’t appear (on ours at least…some say they do see more detail). An example of how they can mislead: my D took the SAT and didn’t do well (~1200?). She switched to the ACT and ended up with a composite 34. Her school doesn’t have enough kids taking the ACT, so no grid appears with her ACT score, yet her acceptance to a highly selective school with a 1200 SAT looks like a very odd / special case. It’s not…just a flaw in the data based on a test score never submitted to anyone.
It’s a good tool for quick research, but all of the data is available on the internet. Sites like niche have summaries…they just don’t have the scattergrams. Those charts are interesting for a quick sense of where your child stands, but never impacted our application decisions.