The mountain students must climb to attain the summit of their dream college seems to be getting steeper all the time. Every year, students are overwhelmed with stories of plummeting acceptance rates, increased competition and extreme selectiveness at the most popular schools.
The prospect of applying to college is a terrifying, daunting task that looms in the distance for high school juniors, and unfortunately, this fear is exacerbated by a resource that was designed to help alleviate it: Naviance.
The guidance department uses Naviance as a college and career readiness site in order to track and organize students’ post-graduation plans. It is central to the college application process, with all scores, grades and resources compiled into one spot. But however efficient this may be for administrative purposes, Naviance has one flaw that negates many of its better qualities.
Under each college, Naviance projects the average statistics of students from Saratoga High who have been accepted into that school. It also compares a student’s grades, scores and GPA to these averages. While seemingly harmless, this feature of Naviance is actually quite an issue.
Because Naviance is pulling solely from Saratoga High graduates, the statistics don’t give an accurate overall representation of a school’s admission standards. However, most students aren’t aware of this upward skewing and instead simply see the almost impossible standards depicted on the plot graph.
In fact, many students are overqualified for the schools that they are accepted to, with many simply applying for backup or safety. Furthermore, for the top schools, students with extremely high GPAs are often accepted, and this distorts the average so that it doesn’t show the students with lower GPAs who had gotten in.
For example, according to Naviance, the average GPA of accepted students to Pomona College is a 4.34, which is extremely high for most students. However, according to Pomona’s admissions website, the average GPA rounds out to be a 4.08, a much more reasonable goal for most top students.
Furthermore, according to the graph on Naviance, several students with GPAs below a 4.34 have gotten into the school. Having this statistic on Naviance might dissuade students from applying to schools that they are more suited for than they think, merely because they are comparing themselves to the unrealistic information being relayed.
Adding to the problem, the statistics shown on Naviance — GPA, SAT score, ACT score and PSAT score — are not representative of all the reasons for a student’s acceptance. Many schools favor students who have varied extracurriculars or unique talents, something that can’t be quantified in Naviance.
Furthermore, although admissions may be influenced by district or socioeconomic status, it is incorrect to assume that the entirety of admissions can be based on only one factor, such as an SAT math score. Yes, socioeconomic status should be taken into consideration, but it is not the be all end-all of an application, and Naviance inaccurately skews its importance. In fact, according to a 2015 dissertation by Stanford graduate Sean F. Reardon, affirmative action or discrimination based on socioeconomic status is negligible and does not make any major impact in college admissions.
College admissions is an extremely volatile field, and having statistics that only reflect one school may give students the wrong overall impression.
In order to rectify this, Naviance should display national statistics also, rather than just those of Saratoga High students. Equally important, the site should not rely quite as much on self-reporting of scores, grades and GPA, which are often inflated or incorrect. In fact, in a sampling of 10 seniors that I did, four said that they had reported an incorrect score or GPA to Naviance.
Until Naviance can be properly calibrated to show real statistics, it should be understood by students that the statistics on the site are nothing more than somewhat interesting numbers — but not ones that guarantee one outcome or another.