Spinoff of college admission threads - thing I just learned

[erosenst]

Lots of college admissions threads so thought I'd share what I just learned. If your high schooler uses Naviance, there's a function there that shows the stats by college for your school - last five years of applications, acceptances, and enrollment by year, plus a chart showing by student (no names/identifiers of course) where their GPA and SAT/ACT land on a matrix and if they were accepted or not. It also shows where your kid lands on the matrix, which gives a guesstimate of acceptance odds. A little hard to describe but fascinating. And while I said in another thread that DD had narrowed to four schools, it's now up to seven as her acceptance odds are even more of a crapshoot than we thought ( ! ).

High level - she's at a school with a highly rigorous curriculum/tons of course offerings, and high test scores but minimal grade inflation. It's not unusual for kids to have 15+ AP/IB/full weight classes. For one highly competitive school 147 kids have applied in the last five years. Five have gotten in. We know one was profoundly gifted, state champion athlete who won a national science contest. Another must have been a high level athlete in some sport - 28 ACT and 4.0. Other 3 acceptances were 33-34 ACT and 4.1-4.5 GPA - but a number of higher ACT/GPA combos didn't get in, including maybe 10 36 ACT and 4.1+ GPA.

Gonna be a long year waiting for admission decisions!! And yes, you now have to decide whether knowledge is power, and you want to look....or that ignorance is bliss .

[o_mom]

Lots of college admissions threads so thought I'd share what I just learned. If your high schooler uses Naviance, there's a function there that shows the stats by college for your school - last five years of applications, acceptances, and enrollment by year, plus a chart showing by student (no names/identifiers of course) where their GPA and SAT/ACT land on a matrix and if they were accepted or not. It also shows where your kid lands on the matrix, which gives a guesstimate of acceptance odds. A little hard to describe but fascinating. And while I said in another thread that DD had narrowed to four schools, it's now up to seven as her acceptance odds are even more of a crapshoot than we thought ( ! ).

High level - she's at a school with a highly rigorous curriculum/tons of course offerings, and high test scores but minimal grade inflation. It's not unusual for kids to have 15+ AP/IB/full weight classes. For one highly competitive school 147 kids have applied in the last five years. Five have gotten in. We know one was profoundly gifted, state champion athlete who won a national science contest. Another must have been a high level athlete in some sport - 28 ACT and 4.0. Other 3 acceptances were 33-34 ACT and 4.1-4.5 GPA - but a number of higher ACT/GPA combos didn't get in, including maybe 10 36 ACT and 4.1+ GPA.

Gonna be a long year waiting for admission decisions!! And yes, you now have to decide whether knowledge is power, and you want to look....or that ignorance is bliss .

Oh, yes... that is depressing.

I will say that some of it is the details of those applications. For some schools, it can be highly competitive in certain majors (e.g. computer science), but not as much in other areas. Most of the higher level schools will also recalculate your GPA as unweighted (and I have yet to figure out how to find that in our system). Then there is the "cap" on the number of students from our school that certain in-state schools have. They have said that if they went by numbers alone, they could fill their allotment of in-state students from our high school (probably an exaggeration, but I think that in principle this is happening).

[erosenst]

Oh, yes... that is depressing.

I will say that some of it is the details of those applications. For some schools, it can be highly competitive in certain majors (e.g. computer science), but not as much in other areas. Most of the higher level schools will also recalculate your GPA as unweighted (and I have yet to figure out how to find that in our system). Then there is the "cap" on the number of students from our school that certain in-state schools have. They have said that if they went by numbers alone, they could fill their allotment of in-state students from our high school (probably an exaggeration, but I think that in principle this is happening).

Right - her odds are worse as the competitive schools to which she's applying are direct admit to ...yes highly competitive CS programs. It will help that she's a white female with 4 years of AP CS classes but...who knows how much.

DD recalculated her unweighted manually - but to make it worse some schools eliminate some classes so who knows what THEIR system will show. I found it interesting that Naviance focuses on weighted though.

I didn't look closely at the stats for the instate school to which DD will apply - but to your point it's not a total given that she will get in. This years acceptance isn't fully populating yet (at least that's the strong guess - it's way too low even for this year at the state schools ) but eyeballing looked like < 50%. I didn't spend much time but I do know that the cutoff for GPA/test scores is waayyyyyyyyyyy higher than in the dark ages when I attended the other big state school.

I think what may have surprised me most is that admittance stats matched the overall university average. I would have thought that our HS would be above that average, and have 1-2 per year at minimum. All 5 were the same year. It may also impact future that non attended - but again such a total crap shoot.

If I haven't mentioned - I like knowing waaaayyyyyyyyyy more than it appears possible for this process. I keep reminding myself that a) it's a crapshoot and b) it will all be fine/work out at some point.

[gatorsmom]

oops double post

[gatorsmom]

I highly recommend this book that StantonHyde linked to on another college thread. It does a great job of explaining the selection process. Essentially it’s different for every college. Each college places an emphasis on different student qualities and strengths. And every year they tend to shift their selection guidelines to suit different needs- they might need more full-paying students one year than another, maybe trying to fill certain quotas of ethnicity, SES etc. Its an easy and fascinating read that basically says, do your best in high school, do what you can to stand out, prove with your high school course choices that you truly want into a specific program, and know that even perfect-on-paper students might be rejected for reasons they can’t control. It’s a crap shoot.

https://www.jeffselingo.com/book/who-gets-in-and-why/

[wendibird22]

I agree with gatorsmom.

Unweighted core GPA (so history, science, math, ELA ONLY) is become the more dominant metric to look at as a measure of success in college.

And there's a whole industry of data mining that gives admissions reports about who they should offer enrollment to in any given year based on funding available to get those individuals to deposit, who is likely to accept an offer and at what funding level, what academic programs are over/under subscribed, and yes all the variety of demographics. Each institution has its own playbook and even being an insider, I would be hard pressed to crack the code on another institution's enrollment strategy. Throw in the fact that the pandemic has rendered application and enrollment trends almost useless as a predictor of current applicant behavior, and it's anyone's guess!

[erosenst]

I highly recommend this book that StantonHyde linked to on another college thread. It does a great job of explaining the selection process. Essentially it’s different for every college. Each college places an emphasis on different student qualities and strengths. And every year they tend to shift their selection guidelines to suit different needs- they might need more full-paying students one year than another, maybe trying to fill certain quotas of ethnicity, SES etc. Its an easy and fascinating read that basically says, do your best in high school, do what you can to stand out, prove with your high school course choices that you truly want into a specific program, and know that even perfect-on-paper students might be rejected for reasons they can’t control. It’s a crap shoot.

https://www.jeffselingo.com/book/who-gets-in-and-why/

Def agree it was an interesting read and your other points. This data surprised me even after reading the book...sigh. I have always gotten the 'crapshoot' part, even before the book although a bit more so since. For some reason seeing the stats from our very very large, academically strong, high SES school hit home in a different way. And yes, I get some of that works against applicants but it was still eye opening.

[elbenn]

Is this website for anyone to look at or do you have to have an account through your school?

[erosenst]

Is this website for anyone to look at or do you have to have an account through your school?

Your kid has to have an account through the school. Which they very well may have without you knowing it - I can't log in/get very very few notices about it.

[KrisM]

Even if your school has Naviance you may not have data like that. We have Naviance, but all the data says "not enough to show the plot" or something. Even with 200+ applications. So a big mystery still.