Dina Ingram: Good evening, everyone joining us. We're just gonna give it a few seconds for the room to fill up, and then we'll begin.
Dina Ingram: Okay, welcome everyone. My name is Dina Ingram. I'm the director of family engagement here at Stuyvesant High School. Thank you for joining us tonight for our naviance family workshop
Dina Ingram: tonight. One of our most recent college counselors is going to be with us, Miss Allison Kliman. We're very happy that she has joined us this year at Stuyvesant High School, and we think that you're gonna have a great night tonight and learn a lot about how to use naviance. So I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Kliman, and just to keep in mind you can use the QA. Tonight to enter your questions, and we'll be having a QA. Session following the presentation.
Dina Ingram: Alright, Miss Kleiman, take it away.
Allison Kleiman: Good evening, everybody, and thank you, Miss Ingram, for that introduction, and for being with us here to night. My name is Allison Kleiman.
Allison Kleiman: My pronouns are she her and I'm the newest member of the college office team.
Allison Kleiman: Tonight we are gathered to speak and learn all about naviance.
Allison Kleiman: So naviance is a college planning web platform that is used by students.
Allison Kleiman: parents, guardians, and school staff to coordinate the entire college planning process.
Allison Kleiman: This tool is something that all 4 grade levels have access to, and all parents and guardians are welcome to use this throughout the High school time.
Allison Kleiman: I want to be really clear that the Naviance platform is internal to our school community. That means that information found inside of naviance is confidential to the student and or staff member who's viewing it. It's not public facing, it's not college facing, so no one else can see inside your student's account. Their Gpa. Is not accessible to others. Their test score record is not accessible to others. It is really meant
Allison Kleiman: for internal use for our building.
Allison Kleiman: The really common misunderstanding about naviance is that it's an application platform. It is not a place for students to apply to college. It is just a planning tool and just something that we use to organize the process within our building.
Allison Kleiman: The website that you'll use as a student or as a parent or Guardian is shown here on the screen student.naviance.com forward slash, Stuyvesant.
Allison Kleiman: if you try and just Google the word naviance, it's possible you'll be directed to either the school staff sign on Page or the Corporate Naviance sign on page. Neither of those are what you're looking for. You're looking for this address. So we recommend that if you know this is a site you want to use frequently.
Allison Kleiman: Go ahead and save it to your device as a favorite on your browser so that you'll be able to go back to it frequently.
Allison Kleiman: When we first talked about this session, and when we were brainstorming what we wanted to make sure we covered. One of the things was sort of laying out a timeline
Allison Kleiman: to help students and families. Picture how you might use the Naviance website over the course of your 4 years at Stey.
Allison Kleiman: and I'll go over each of these things. But I think you can sort of see at a glance that the usefulness and the frequency of use over time
Allison Kleiman: grows. So it is really common for a ninth grade family to possibly only log into this site once or twice even a year. Right? It's not something we would expect you to be checking all of the time.
Allison Kleiman: And then, as the student progresses. There's gonna be more and more tools that are gonna be relevant to use more frequently. And by the time the student is a senior it's very possible that you could be logging in during peak times of year, multiple times a week, or even daily. So you'll notice that it morphs and evolves as your student matures.
Allison Kleiman: But let's break it down year by year, because I know our audience tonight has lots of different students represented. And we're so glad that you're here.
Allison Kleiman: So in ninth grade is when students first get access to their naviance account. So the invites go out to the ninth grade student, and we're going to talk about how parents get added in a moment. But all students right now in the building have access to their account.
Allison Kleiman: It's most likely that if you're a freshman.
Allison Kleiman: the 2 things you might use naviance for would be, first, the document section. There's a sort of a virtual document file folder where the college office posts, various resources and tools, both things that we create
Allison Kleiman: or things that we found out out in the Internet that are useful for students of all grade levels. So information about scholarships and financial aid, information about our school policies, things like that.
Allison Kleiman: And the document
Allison Kleiman: resource tab is useful for everyone, and you're going to notice here some of the entries are italicized. Those are specific to the student. If you see something not italicized. That's something that a parent might use also. So in ninth grade, really, the main feature that a parent or a guardian might be using is that sort of document section.
Allison Kleiman: There is also career and self-discovery inventories, and those are open to all grade levels. But we feel like that's probably the main thing that a freshman would be logging in to use, and these career inventories and self-discovery inventories
Allison Kleiman: are available. 24, 7. They're self-paced, and a student is welcome to explore them. If they are curious about thinking about what types of careers might be out there, what their strengths might suit them, for these are certainly meant to be exploratory. They are not final. They are not permanent, especially for a ninth grader. But if you're sort of looking for ways to nudge your student to use these tools. Ninth grade would be an appropriate time for that.
Allison Kleiman: You'll notice that it's italicized, which means parents and guardians cannot take these inventories. Their view only for parents, but the the student's account. When the student signs in as themselves, they will have access to those tools.
Allison Kleiman: Then, when a student becomes a sophomore. It might be the time there could be some occasional college or career research going on.
Allison Kleiman: and an example of what I mean is, let's say, sophomores are on their April vacation. You're driving on a trip to visit some aunts and uncles, a couple of states away, and you see a sign on the highway of a college that you're passing.
Allison Kleiman: Maybe the next week the student or the family together wants to look up that college and check out how many students from Stuyvesant have applied.
Allison Kleiman: What types of majors are featured at that school? How large is it, you know, getting some basic information about various campuses that would be an appropriate use in the tenth grade, let's say now you can see the twelfth and eleventh eleventh and twelfth grade columns. We really expand the use of naviance, and that's really going to be when it's used a little bit more frequently. As you can see, there's a lot of carryover from year to year. So the documents are still available.
Allison Kleiman: Career research is still available. But now the eleventh graders are most likely going to be expanding and starting to use the colleges. I'm thinking about list, which is sort of a brainstorming place that you can put your favorite schools so you don't have to type them in week after week, or day after day. You can also look and use scatter grams a little more clearly. We're gonna talk about what a scattergram is, you don't need to know the definition right now, but that could be something that picks up a little bit around. Now, really second semester of Junior year.
Allison Kleiman: And then a really important, actual sort of assignment or task that students need to complete. Inside of naviance is the student SSR. And college planning survey.
Allison Kleiman: Those are 2 separate surveys that the college office and the school counseling office use
Allison Kleiman: for the college planning process. That's sort of it's not a graded assignment, but it is something that needs to get finished during Junior year.
Allison Kleiman: There's also a parent guardian facing survey, and we're going to talk about that, too.
Allison Kleiman: And then in twelfth grade the utilization of naviance expands slightly because it's used as our document processing tool. So for a lot of schools, they are linked with the common app which is linked with naviance. And it's the way that we transmit things like letters of recommendation and transcripts.
Allison Kleiman: Seniors are also going to be able to see the calendar listing of colleges that are visiting Stuyvesant. Each fall we have over a hundred colleges come specifically to meet with our students face-to-face, and they can see the list of colleges through their naviance account.
Allison Kleiman: The college list they use is going to slightly shift over to the colleges I'm applying to. So previously. It was that brainstorming thinking about list. And when you're a senior you pull those over to let the college office know where you've actually submitted an application.
Allison Kleiman: There is a task where you need to link your common app account to your naviance account. Common app is a platform where the applications live. So if you remember the earlier slide when I said, there are no applications on naviance, the place where the applications live is most frequently a website called the common app and naviance is integrated with that. So seniors have a task where they link those 2 sites together.
Naviance is also where seniors are going to invite their teachers.
Allison Kleiman: typically students ask 2 Stuyvesant teachers to write letters of recommendation.
Allison Kleiman: and that invitation is done through the Navy's website. And then in the spring semester. Once a student knows their application outcomes and knows where they're planning to enroll in college. The student updates their naviance account to let us know what happened with each school.
Allison Kleiman: Sorry about that.
Allison Kleiman: So a lot of you are wondering how you can gain access to naviance if you don't already have it so when your student creates their account. And again Mr. Macras sent out the invitations for all students already. I believe he did it in November for this for the freshmen
Allison Kleiman: when they log in to their student-facing account.
Allison Kleiman: If they click on the initials on the upper right hand corner and then scroll down and click parent guardian. They're able to enter in your name and your email, the email needs to be spelled correctly. And that's the most important piece of information, because once your name and email are saved into the student side of their account.
Allison Kleiman: you can then email Miss de Massey. She's our college office secretary. Her email address is listed here.
Allison Kleiman: These instructions are also listed within naviance. So if you don't have, don't you don't need to take a screenshot of this slide. You can see all the steps. Your student can see all the steps inside of naviance. But you can send Miss Damasia an email. The subject line just needs to say, please activate parent guardian account.
Allison Kleiman: the name of the student. Their osis number in the body of the email, and she'll process and activate your account. I will warn you especially this week. I suspect there's going to be an uptick in the request. So be patient. It's gonna probably take her a few days
Allison Kleiman: to get through the request, but rest assured. She will get to it. And then you're going to get an automated email from the Naviance Company, and you'll be able to reset your password and and make a formal login for your parent facing account.
Allison Kleiman: If for some reason you don't get the invitation, and it's been like over a week, and you're really confused. What's happening? Make sure you check your spam folder, because more often than not. The invitation potentially goes there.
Allison Kleiman: So I wanna now take you through some sample screens before we do the live demo, so that you can understand some highlights of of how parents and guardians might be using their navience accounts. So first, I wanna make sure everyone is aware that naviance has
Allison Kleiman: translation services embedded within the website. So in case you are a multilingual family, and we are so proud to have so many multilingual families in our building. You do not have to use this website just in English. When you sign in, there's a little globe in the upper right hand corner.
Allison Kleiman: you can click it. It's going to bring up a pop-up screen, and you can select
Allison Kleiman: really a huge variety of languages whichever one you're most comfortable in. So please feel free to adjust naviance, to make sure that you get to to use it to its fullest potential.
Allison Kleiman: There is also going to be a message box on your naviance account. And this is a nice place to see all the college office emails in one place. Now, if your email is in naviance already, because your student put it there.
Allison Kleiman: you should be getting these emails to your regular email inbox as well. But we know how many emails you get. And we know how easy it is to miss messages. So if you ever want to see a centralized list of just college office messages, you can always visit this message box, and students have this, and parents have it as well.
Allison Kleiman: When you are on the home screen there's a few different things I want to point out primarily that you're going to be able to see your students current cumulative Gpa, and you'll be able to do that by clicking on the account link.
Allison Kleiman: as well as the current test scores that the college office has on file. Now, I want to be clear to say
Allison Kleiman: there's a few caveats with test scores. Number one. There's a delay in the time that the college board sends the student their score, and the time it gets takes to reach us in the office. So just because your student got their score, don't expect to see it that very same day in their navviance account. But Mr. Macris usually gets it within a few weeks, and he's able to upload it to the system.
Allison Kleiman: Sometimes students opt out of having their scores sent with sent to their high school. So if you notice, all your friends have gotten their scores updated, and yours is still missing, don't panic. It most likely means that you either opted out of sharing your score with us, or if you didn't opt out, it could be that your name is similar to a past student, and out of an abundance of caution, so that we don't mix up student records. It may have just not been synced, in which case
Allison Kleiman: any student is welcome to self, report their score within naviance.
Allison Kleiman: And I say, student, this is a student task, but I'm sharing with you all as parents and guardians, because I know you're shepherding them and guiding them. Just how to use this website. But students can self report. Just be very careful about accuracy, because, as we know a few keystrokes. You know there's a big difference between a 400 and a 7 50, so don't don't type the wrong numbers accidentally. But again, this is totally internal.
Allison Kleiman: If there was to be a mistake, a college would not be able to see it, but it certainly makes the the website more useful to have accurate information.
Allison Kleiman: If you're a Stuyvesant parent with multiple students, you are able to see all students separately and on the upper right hand side. You're going to see the name of the student with a little drop down Arrow. If you click that arrow. If you have multiple students, you'll be able to select. Which student you're looking to see.
Allison Kleiman: I mentioned earlier that sort of the theme for all 4 grade levels that are sort of popular uses for naviance is the document tab. So the college office
Allison Kleiman: shares documents kind of all year round with families, and when you want to see those documents, the repository of documents. You can do that by selecting the little initial on the upper right hand corner and then clicking documents shared with me.
Allison Kleiman: Once there, you can select college office. And you're gonna see a huge list of items, including translated items. Things like our college office handbook. This powerpoint, I'll be uploading there as well. So you know, it's it's a really nice place. If you have a question.
Allison Kleiman: especially a burning question, that you just can't wait for an email response for, or if it's over the summer, and you know we're not in the office. It's a really good place to check here to get your questions answered.
Allison Kleiman: There is that parent guardian survey that I mentioned on that first slide for eleventh grade families. I want to make a couple things clear when we talk about surveys and specifically about the parent guardian survey.
Allison Kleiman: So, first off the initials SSR. Stands for secondary school report. So the parent SSR. Survey is intended to be a way for you, the parent guardian.
Allison Kleiman: to communicate in writing with the school counselor and the college counselors, to share sort of your side of the story or your your voice. We wanna make sure that you're included, because we know teenagers don't always share with us everything we want them to share. And so this way, we have more than one sort of source of information
Allison Kleiman: that said.
Allison Kleiman: this survey is meant to help your student. It's meant to help the staff members get to know them better. This is not a graded assignment. This is not meant to be stressful. We really would encourage you to answer the questions on the survey
Allison Kleiman: as if you were having a spoken conversation.
Allison Kleiman: You don't need to stress about word choice or grammar I've experienced. You know it's my first year at Sty, but it's not my first year working in New York City, and I've had many, many students over many, many parents and guardians over the past 14 years who
Allison Kleiman: come with a panicked email saying, I submitted my survey and I need to change it. I don't want anything misconstrued. And first off
Allison Kleiman: at Stuyvesant, we've actually adjusted it so that there is no submit button.
Allison Kleiman: which means it's editable all the time. So if you decide later on that there is something else you wanted to say, or you do want to add a sentence or delete a sentence. You can do that at any time we've left it open intentionally, staff can see your answers even without a submit button.
Allison Kleiman: But the more important thing I want to share is. This really, truly is not meant to be like? A punitive or a stressful experience. It's just meant to be sure that we don't leave any stone unturned, and that you have a voice in this sort of process while the student is at the center, and we certainly wanna pay most attention to sort of their
Allison Kleiman: comments and experiences. We don't want to leave you out. So this is your opportunity to share information. I also want to make clear these surveys. Both. The student facing survey and the parent guardian survey are only used to help your student.
Allison Kleiman: so there's nothing you could ever disclose here that would ever be used or held against or used negatively for your students. So you can really speak openly and know that the only things that will be included in the counselor letter that come from the parent survey are things the counselor feels
Allison Kleiman: are improving or recommending that student for admission, so don't feel like you need to censor yourself. Again. No colleges can see this survey, and these surveys are confidential from the members of the family, so
Allison Kleiman: students cannot see their parent guardian survey, and parent guardians cannot see their student surveys. There's a reason you have your own login and your own password, and they are designed to be separate
Allison Kleiman: the place that you find the survey, and we'll show this in the demo. But you click on the little initials on the upper right hand corner, and then the bottom of that window says surveys from your school. You'll click on that. And then, when you're a junior parent eleventh grade, parents in the middle of the school year. It typically goes, live in in January. Is when you're able to enter that SSR survey.
Allison Kleiman: Once students and parents sign into these accounts. You're going to see a bar across the top with 5 different sections, home, self discovery, careers, colleges, and planner.
Allison Kleiman: The self-discovery tab is an opportunity for students to do career and interest inventories. These are the ones I was talking about for the ninth and tenth grade students, and they're available for all 12, all 4 years, ninth through twelfth grade. But we suspect that if a ninth or tenth grader is using navience, this is probably the tab they're going to be looking at.
Allison Kleiman: Now, I'm showing you this in this presentation, so that you're aware of what you're gonna be seeing. But this is view only for the parent guardian side. The reason is, you are not the one applying to college or or thinking about a new career in this context. These are student facing assessments.
Allison Kleiman: and parents and guardians cannot and should not complete these assessments on behalf of their students. So when you're logged in as a parent. You're not going to be able to actually click on these pictures and assessments, but when the student is logged in as themselves, they will be able to take these assessments.
Allison Kleiman: There is also the Careers section, where again, you have the opportunity to do some exploration as well as look up individual careers to learn more about
how to get to that career, and the sort of forecast for what it looks like to work in that career.
Allison Kleiman: When you look up. Let's say you wanted to find out more about being an actuary.
Allison Kleiman: You'll look it up in the career explorer, and you're going to have 3 separate tabs come up a summary of the career like an overview.
Allison Kleiman: a skills and experience tab to help. You understand what it takes to do that job is this something you can do with an associate's degree, with a bachelor's degree, with a Master's degree, etc.,
and then it even gives a wage forecast so that helps you sort of see what types of compensation is available and how it varies based on parts of the country.
Allison Kleiman: So I've highlighted New York here. But you're able to sort of click around and and notice the differences in pay, scale, and sort of how the outlook might look for different regions of the country.
Allison Kleiman: and these are tools that are available for parents to type in and explore with a caveat that only the student can favorite and save a career. So if you wanted that to be the end goal of the exploration, it's a good idea to have the student sign in, and you so be side by side with them, looking at the screen together. Because if you're just on your parent
Allison Kleiman: account, and you're kind of exploring, you'll be able to see all the same information, but you won't be able to save it as a favorite.
Allison Kleiman: and then I think the reason most of you are here, or the reason. This site, the navy on site is so powerful is the colleges tab, and I think, while the self Discovery and the career section is lovely and and interesting for underclassmen. I think the sort of strongest elements of naviance come from the college planning tools and the colleges. Tab is a place where you're gonna be able to both do a filter search for colleges and and sort of figure out what types of colleges fit into different criteria
Allison Kleiman: as well as manually look up individual colleges. So like, I was saying with that road trip example, you know, if you are watching a TV show or reading an article or driving, and and notice a campus that you haven't heard of before. You're able to look it up individually, and there's lots and lots and lots of information shown here.
Allison Kleiman: good. Next slide when you find a college that you like, or that you want your student to like.
Allison Kleiman: here is the first time that you are as a parent able to save information into the system. So if you're looking at a college, and you think your student might be interested in it.
Allison Kleiman: you are able to click the heart which will save that college to the students thinking about list.
Allison Kleiman: So it's not a commitment to apply. It's just saying, Hey, I think this is interesting. I don't wanna have to type it in manually next time, and that way you can can log back in, and it'll be saved for you year after year. When you do this it will show up as on the student side, as something saved by the parent. You're also gonna see? I just am clearing up for you. There's gonna be some little icons little legend that tells you how the documents will be sent. If your student applies to that college.
Allison Kleiman: there's 3 options. There's a little computer screen that's blank. That tells you that items are sent electronically through naviance. But this is not a common app partner.
If it has a little computer screen with a Ca, that means it is a common app partner. So if your student chooses to apply, they'll be using the common application. And then there's a bit of a misleading icon, which is a little stamp which makes you think that we're gonna mail something on paper
Allison Kleiman: that typically no longer happens. It is still usually an electronic transfer. But it just means it doesn't happen within the Naviance website, we would use a different platform or an email
Allison Kleiman: or some other way to get the records there. But if you're curious what those those pictures mean. That's what they mean. But for for most students in this webinar. So families in ninth, tenth, or eleventh grade, when you heart to college. It's just gonna add it to that college, as I'm thinking about list
Allison Kleiman: now, Scattergrams are, I think, one of the most powerful tools in the system, and I suspect that you're gonna get the most out of naviance when you look at the Scattergram screens, the term Scattergram just refers to this visual representation that shows the Stuyvesant history for this college
for the past 3 application cycles. So these graphs are constantly evolving. And if you notice, you can actually toggle between using sat as the X axis, or act as the X axis, and then Gpa is the y-axis.
Allison Kleiman: And so each of these little dots is representing an application filed by a Stuyvesant student, and it lets you know the outcome of the application as well as the round of the application. So on this screen. Here
Allison Kleiman: we can see there's a legend at the bottom. The blue circle with the little person inside represents your student. So if your student has a test score in the system. They are. Gonna be populated on these scatter grams. If they don't have a test score they won't be able to be populated but for us. Once, students take the PSA.
Allison Kleiman: In the spring of sophomore year we have test scores, for you know the vast majority of our student body, and when they log in they're going to see themselves represented on the graph
Allison Kleiman: based on their current, cumulative, unweighted Gpa and their current high score in the sat.
Allison Kleiman: And
Allison Kleiman: you'll notice that there's a legend at the bottom showing you that green dots are students who've been admitted to this college.
Allison Kleiman: Blue dots are students who've been waitlisted to this college.
Allison Kleiman: and red dots are students who've been denied admission. And then, further, you can see if it has a circle that means it was through an early decision round.
Allison Kleiman: and if it has a square around it that was through an early action round. Now, if you're a freshman or sophomore, or even junior parent, you might not be familiar with early decision and early action. Those are terms that have to do with when the application was submitted, what round it was submitted through, and if the application was a binding application through early decision or a non-binding application through one of the other rounds.
Allison Kleiman: and we're going to do a demo later, and and I'll show you a little bit more about
Allison Kleiman: these scatter grams and these pages. But this visual representation is a really good way for students to understand where they fall in the landscape of that particular school over the past 3 years for students from our high school. So what gives this power is these are students with the same curriculum as your student. And it's it's a really great way to get a basic understanding of if this school might be
Allison Kleiman: a reach school, a target school, or a likely school.
Allison Kleiman: Now in the blue. At the top of this slide we have a really important message, which is, Scattergrams are just one piece of the puzzle. This is not fully reflective of holistic admissions and holistic admissions refers to the way that most American colleges operate in, that they don't just have one or 2 criteria for admission.
Allison Kleiman: They're looking at the whole picture. They're evaluating things like not just the students. Gpa, but the rigor of their courses right where they, taking advanced courses, were they in ap courses did they choose sort of the more difficult path, or the less difficult path? As well as other elements of their application. Things like their essay, their letters of recommendation, their activity, list, and leadership. There. You know
Allison Kleiman: so many different PE interview, so many different pieces. So you can't always embody that right with a dot on a graph. But
Allison Kleiman: we're gonna go through an exercise now to help you sort of learn how to read these graphs and and be what I call a scattergram detective. If you're a junior and you attended the session last month. This is good. These next few slides are. Gonna be a repeat of what you've already seen. But I hope that the repetition will actually help you learn learn what we're talking about. And before we do that, I wanna also point out here in the red on the right.
Allison Kleiman: all of this data gets updated once or twice a year. So if you're a freshman and you look at a scattergram today.
Allison Kleiman: you are going to see a different scatter Gram each year that you look subsequently, because one year is gonna drop off and a new class of graduates is gonna be added in all of these pieces of data are always past students. We never show current student data on these graphs. So they just evolve year after year.
Allison Kleiman: So for this first scattergram detective activity, what we're going to be doing is going and seeing some samples
Allison Kleiman: of ways that you can unpack what you're seeing, and gather some information about the type of school you're looking at, and the type of admissions philosophy that this office might be using. And this is our first example. I will tell you the names of the schools at the end of the slide. But but first we're not gonna pay attention to the name. We're just gonna look at what we visually notice about this school's decisions.
Allison Kleiman: And when I look at a graph like this.
Allison Kleiman: I can see a few things jumping out of me.
Allison Kleiman: Number one. It looks as if this school has a pretty clear line where any student below A. 94 GPA. Has not been admitted in the past 3 years, and you know none of this is set in stone, but it's a clear pattern where the colors change below 94 and above 94. So that tells us that they clearly have sort of an internal standard, right that they're looking for.
Allison Kleiman: And in this case, right? This student, the blue circle does not have a 94. So this might be the type of school that when a student or a family brings it up to us in the college office.
Allison Kleiman: we would
Allison Kleiman: label this right as a far-reach school or a school that we have to be prepared for a denial.
Allison Kleiman: We can also tell that while it's not exact the way that GPA. Is, it does feel like test scores matter to this school, because.
Allison Kleiman: with the exception of a few, almost all the students have at least a 1520 on the SAT.
Allison Kleiman: And I don't think you'll be too surprised to know that this graph is a graph of Georgetown
Allison Kleiman: and you know again, it's
Allison Kleiman: can't see the future. This is not a perfect science, but it gives you a clue as to how their philosophy works.
Allison Kleiman: So let's try another one.
Allison Kleiman: When we look at this graph, I hope it's really clear to you that
Allison Kleiman: this is not Georgetown. It's a really different reading philosophy. They do not have a clear line of above this line. You have a chance of getting in and below this line you don't. Instead, things are really spread out and sort of scattered.
Allison Kleiman: I also notice a lot of blue wait list dots so that the circle, the filled in circle that's bluish purple.
Allison Kleiman: Those are students who are waitlisted. It feels like this school really relies on the waitlist or sort of waitlist heavily, which is not what we saw on the last graph.
Allison Kleiman: I can tell from this graph that there's probably a very good chance that this school cares a lot about demonstrated interest and protecting their yield. They care about fit, and they're trying to admit students they actually think are going to attend their school.
Allison Kleiman: And I will reveal to you that this college is Skidmore, a private Liberal Arts College in upstate New York, and, in fact, we do know that they very much care about the student engaging with them, and they want to feel like you are towards the top of their list. If they're going to be admitting you.
Okay, here's the next one. And again, this is a strikingly different graph than we've seen in the other slides. Here.
Allison Kleiman: Almost everything is green, and that's a good sign, right? That means that this is a school that
Allison Kleiman: really like Stuyvesant students, and it feels like any of our graduates, you know, for the most part right. The majority of our class would be admitted here, and not need to worry about playing games or or rolling the dice. It's a really safe bet. This is a likely school where
Allison Kleiman: this blue student
Allison Kleiman: is clearly in the range for admission, and if a college counselor was talking to a family about this school, we would feel pretty confident that this student is going to be admitted so long as they apply on time and and fill up the application correctly.
Allison Kleiman: This school, we can tell from the graph their mission is access. They are in the business of sharing higher education with someone who wants to learn.
Allison Kleiman: and it is not surprising that this is Suny New Paltz. So public colleges, especially in the State of New York, are designed to serve New Yorkers, and our school is in New York, and they're eager to enroll
Allison Kleiman: students that are qualified and can do the work.
Allison Kleiman: Okay, so this next graph, II hope again, you can notice some really distinct differences.
Allison Kleiman: Number one. It's clearly a popular school. There's a lot of data points on this graph, so we can maybe make some assumptions about the tier of school that it is, and and how popular it is in our building. We also notice that there really is not any. Wait list, activity, very, very different from Skidmore.
Allison Kleiman: and yet similar to Skidmore. There doesn't seem to be just one type of criteria that gets a student, admitted the profile of an admitted student really ranges, and that's a clue to us that this is a school that is looking for individual fit to a college, most likely within a university, and what I mean by that is some college, some universities that are larger have like multiple doorways, and you might apply to
Allison Kleiman: be a student in the performing arts, you might apply to be a student in the liberal arts, you might apply to be a student in business. You might apply to be a student in engineering. These are all different pathways with different admission criteria.
Allison Kleiman: and it seems here that this school is really looking or fit when they admit a student.
Allison Kleiman: And lo and behold, this college is University of Southern California, a large private school on the West Coast.
Allison Kleiman: Okay? So for this last one, we're gonna give a little bit deeper. So the others, we've just sort of been looking at the graph and and talking about what we see here. We're going to practice sort of toggling the different layers of the graph.
Allison Kleiman: So here's the first vision of what we're seeing. And again, similar to Usc, this is a really popular school. I'm seeing a lot of dots. In fact, certain sat bands. It's just like a solid line, because there's so many candidates all across the Gpa. Spectrum. So we can tell. This is this is a school that a lot of Stuyvesant students are interested in.
But let's
Allison Kleiman: filter this and break it down by just early decision.
Allison Kleiman: So when we do that and look at the admitted students, we can see there's a pretty high number of students admitted through that early round. And in this case it's showing both early action and early decision. That's unusual. Not all colleges have both rounds, but I can tell that it does, because I see some students with a square and some students with a circle. But I see a high volume of acceptances.
Allison Kleiman: This, by contrast, is the regular decision, admitted students, and we still see some activity. We still see some green. But there's fewer students, a lower number of of applications that are successful.
Allison Kleiman: But let's expand this to all a regular decision. and you notice the proportion of of green to purple and red is quite different. The majority of people in regular have been denied or waitlisted.
Allison Kleiman: and this tells us that this school is really heavily skewed toward those early rounds, and it lets us know that if I'm serious about this school I probably do need to be in one of those first 2 rounds, skewing it even more heavily toward the binding early decision, and in this case this school is University of Chicago, a private school in the Midwest.
Allison Kleiman: and, in fact, rumor has it that they fill up to four-fifths of their school through an early round, either early action or early decision. That's unusual. But again, we can unpack that through looking at at the graph.
Allison Kleiman: So I'm going to turn off the slides and move over to do a live demo of naviance. So we're going to go through and and sort of see in real time the same things I was just showing you in the still pictures that said I wanted to make sure that everybody sees the contact information for the college office. This is available on the Stuyvesant website. So it's again, you don't have to take a screenshot here. You can always see this 24, 7 through the website.
Allison Kleiman: But we're broken down by Caseload. Official classes. So your students home room will tell you which of the 4 of us your students gonna be working with. We do have open office hours for students to drop in. These are for students only. If you're a parent with a question, you do need to email us. But I just wanted to make sure you saw who you would be contacting and who you'll be working with once your student is a junior and a senior for those individual face to face meetings.
Allison Kleiman: So I'm going to stop sharing for a moment and switch over
Allison Kleiman: to show you a little walk around of
Allison Kleiman: this site. So just bear with me one moment.
Allison Kleiman: I'm not gonna other. So I'm gonna log in as a pretend parent.
Allison Kleiman: And this is what you see on the home page. So I'll just point out some of the things that I shared in the slideshow. So, as I mentioned, you can click this little box here, and it'll pop up all these different languages. So if you're interested in or feel more comfortable using a different language, or you're only fluent in that language. Please
Allison Kleiman: shift over and and use whatever language you need. As I mentioned earlier. If you have multiple students, here's a little dropdown menu. This pretend family only has one student. But if you did have multiples or or different siblings and different grades. You'd be finding that here.
Allison Kleiman: And then here's the message center I was telling you about. So if I wanted to see all the college office messages in one place. You can click on that little
Allison Kleiman: envelope, tab
Allison Kleiman: this. This icon here with the initials is a really popular place that you're going to be repeatedly coming back to reason is this is where you find the documents.
Allison Kleiman: So I click on documents. and then I click on college office.
Allison Kleiman: And here's all the variety of resources, including translations and slides from the various presentations from this school year. So there's a lot to see here, we don't expect you to read every single document. But again, if it's a time when we're unavailable, or if you have a burning question, chances are. You can find it in one of these documents.
Allison Kleiman: and then you can also find the surveys by by going to this little initial tab. clicking surveys.
Allison Kleiman: and you can see here, this is a junior parent sample. There is the the survey that you can start there
Allison Kleiman: all right.
Allison Kleiman: just so your students can know how to invite you. When the student goes into their student facing side when they click on, read more. That's where they'll get the instructions about adding a parent or guardian, and so in case they need to see that it's there. But let's go through these tabs at the top. So like I mentioned before. For the younger grades you may be using the self discovery tab a little more frequently than the other tabs. Partially because
Allison Kleiman: the college data is honestly going to change so much between your freshman year and your junior or senior year, so we wouldn't want you to draw too many conclusions from the data. You see, both because your own Gpa is going to be changing. And the college admissions data is going to be changing. So for younger students. You may not use the colleges, tab all that much, but you might want to use the self-discovery tab
Allison Kleiman: again. This is for students. but I'm showing it to you as a parent. Just so you're aware that it's here, and you can help direct your student this way. You'll notice. See how it turns into a little red
Allison Kleiman: It's a symbol. That's because as a parent, I'm not able to click on this because it's not for me. It's for my student. Part of the reason it's designed like this is the college process really is something where we want the student to be in the driver's seat. You, as the parent or guardian, are absolutely a key player. You're a huge cheerleader. We need your partnership, but the heavy lifting really does need to be done by the student because we're trying to model
Allison Kleiman: shifting that level of responsibility over to them. So you are not gonna be filling out these explorers, but they're here if your student wants them, or if you wanna nudge them towards completing this again, these are not graded. This is not an assignment. It's just there if they want it.
Allison Kleiman: The Careers tab is also a nice resource, and this one, while you can't save anything to the account as a parent you are able to explore. So let's pretend I wanted to look up how to become a pharmacist.
Allison Kleiman: I could click and type in pharmacist. then select the pharmacists tab. And here I can see an overview
Allison Kleiman: of the school of the career kind of a highlight of what students do in that.
Allison Kleiman: What adults do in this career as well as average salaries. So you could tell that this is a job that has a higher starting salary than a lot of other jobs or a higher average salary than a lot of other jobs. And then
Allison Kleiman: you can also
Allison Kleiman: click on these sort of tabs to give a deeper dive of like what
Allison Kleiman: course, what college courses and majors are most closely tied, what classes you can expect to be taking things like that I will say upcoming events is, is typically not a tab that has anything on it. I think hypothetically, Naviance wanted to have like national presentations about various careers. I've never found one that actually has an event coming up. So I would ignore this tab. But these 3 tabs are really nice.
Allison Kleiman: and your student is able to research really a huge plethora of of careers. If they're interested.
Allison Kleiman: you can also click on the clusters and pathways if they're not sure the name of the career, but they know they want to do something related to. Let's say finance. You can open that and see some popular tracks that a student might follow if they were interested in that career field.
Allison Kleiman: Same with military. And then
Allison Kleiman: the bulk of tonight. I think you're probably curious, and came here to learn about the college tools. And I agree, I think, that the most powerful parts of naviance are the college tools, and all 4 grades have access to this, but it's really going to be used most frequently by eleventh and twelfth graders. So you can manually type in the name of any college and pull it up. I'll use the
Allison Kleiman: examples that I gave
Allison Kleiman: that I used in in the presentation for Rochester Institute of Technology. So I can type in by hand and pull up
Allison Kleiman: the profile of this school. and. like I mentioned, if you click on the heart, either here or right here. I can save it to my students account. So this, the parent does have the ability to actively interact with the site and say to their student, Hey, I think you might like this. Cool and you can save it to your quick list to that thinking about list.
Allison Kleiman: But here we've got
Allison Kleiman: 5 different tabs, the overview tab. And if you scroll down here, this is gonna give you
Allison Kleiman: large-scale sort of national data pulled from the the what's called ipads, which is a Federal database with information about different things. Now I will say confusingly. So
Allison Kleiman: they have different data for different schools. So here for Rit, they tell us the average net price. They tell us the graduation rate, the acceptance rate and the upcoming deadlines. When you lift, look at other schools they might include some, but not all of this data, and they might be swapped out with other things. I haven't been able to figure out how they choose what to
Allison Kleiman: highlight on this section. But
Allison Kleiman: long story short is you're gonna see highlights about this school and sort of things that might stand out to you. I do want to have a comment about this average net price.
Allison Kleiman: it's just an average, and it's really not something you should use as a a firm guide. You know, you can toggle, and it tells you the average prices for different incomes. But I would definitely use the net price calculator before I would use this naviance tool? But at a glance, if it's helpful to you, feel free to use it. And then.
Allison Kleiman: as you scroll down this section, I want you to be really, really careful with, because it says here, how do you compare with others who have applied to Rochester Institut of Technology, and it tries to give you data about our school, and you and I find it uses these sort of like really hard to read graphics.
Allison Kleiman: I would really proceed with caution. If you're if you're looking at this section, I think the scatter grams are much better tools. Because our school is so homogeneous in a lot of ways. I'm not sure that this tool really gives you as much power. So I would sort of disregard this particular section.
Allison Kleiman: The studies. Tab is going to show you various programs that are offered by this school, most popular majors. And then you can kind of filter and see what specifics are offered by this school. This is a large school. They have a lot of choices.
Allison Kleiman: The student life tab is going to show you again some highlights about like data and and national national information and statistics that are available to let you know what percent of students live on campus is this school categorized as small, medium or large. What's the nearest city? This is sort of nice. It tells you the distance from our our home Zip code, which is nice to see how how long it's gonna take you to get there.
They have a breakdown of the student body's race and ethnicity of gender
Allison Kleiman: Residency status. Again, this data does vary by college. They they show show different things for different campuses, but it's nice to see at a glance.
Allison Kleiman: But this is the tab that I think you're going to care about the most, which is the admissions tab. And here, when you scroll down, you have this first initial visual representation. This shows our high school. So Stuyveson High School's 3 year snapshot
Allison Kleiman: of students who have applied to RIT. Been accepted to RIT. And enrolled at RIT. And interestingly, you see a pattern here which is
Allison Kleiman: the number of acceptances and the number of admitted enrolled students has actually been relatively stable. Sort of regardless of the number of applications sent, which is a little interesting. But this is real data. It changes every year. So next year 2021 is going to fall off, and 2024 is going to be added. But it's nice to see at a glance sort of the proportion of of successful applicants for this school.
Allison Kleiman: And then, when we scroll down, this is the scattergram I was telling you about. So all of our student Gpas are unweighted, so there's nothing to toggle here. If you wanted to toggle between SAT and a CT. You can.
Allison Kleiman: And you can then see at a glance
Allison Kleiman: what's been happening for this school, and how the patterns have evolved.
Allison Kleiman: What you notice here is this is typically a likely school for a lot of our students. We see a lot of green. And what we can guess is the the indications where a student was waitlisted or denied. That's probably to one of their really popular and more selective majors. So you know, schools can have different outcomes for different academic interests. What I like about the scattergram, though, is, you can actually toggle on and off the different
Allison Kleiman: filters. So let's say, you only wanted to see denied students and waitlisted students, and you wanted to see if there was a trend. You can click on the legend, and it will remove the dots, and if you wanted to add them back in, you could say, Oh, look! There's how many people applied early decision and got in. Here's how many people were
Allison Kleiman: waitlisted, and then eventually got in. Here's how many people who did regular decision and got in, and so forth and so on. So it's a really nice way to sort of clean up, especially the messier graphs that are really really overwhelming. You can also use your mouse
Allison Kleiman: and zoom in or out, so I'm just sort of toggling with a roller on my mouse to to zoom in or out which? So that's available to you as well.
Allison Kleiman: And then
Allison Kleiman: I these sort of the application factors are pulled from the common data set, which is a tool that that is available for pretty much all colleges, and it might give you an at a glance. Look to see how important or not important things might be. I, again would only use this at a glance, both because colleges change their policies year to year, and because there's sometimes a 2 or 3 year lag in what student schools are doing versus what is reported in the data. But again, it's it's a nice tool to see
without having to do a lot of clicking. And then the final tab here is about costs.
Allison Kleiman: Again, I would really be cautious about using these exact numbers. But I think you can look at a general sense and say, Okay, I can tell this school
Allison Kleiman: while we really love the school. If the average net price for a low income family is 20,000, that's a sign that they're gapping students, meaning they're charging more than you can afford. That is common. Many schools do that, but it might be something to factor in. If you're torn between 2 or 3 schools, and you're not sure which school, to add, you might use finances as a partial guide.
Allison Kleiman: So I think we are going to pause from the live demo and pivot over to doing some QA. I know that Miss Ingram's been managing the Q. And a. And is going to facilitate some questions. So let's
Allison Kleiman: transition to that section. Com.
Allison Kleiman: Hope you're muted. You're muted. But we see you.
Dina Ingram: You're right. I am muted. Thank you so much. It was a great presentation. We do have some great questions that have come in through the QA. And so they might be. I'm going to give you a few. They might be a little out of order from what you're seeing. But there are some that have come through
Dina Ingram: this is a great one if we select that we're interested in a school and ambience and want to engage with them. Does this inform the school that we're interested in them? And does it also check the demonstrated interest box?
Allison Kleiman: Good question. So
Allison Kleiman: it's a little bit of a complicated answer. So on its surface, or at least according to what Novant's has told the DOE. This, this website is a DOE approved vendor. They they have privacy
Allison Kleiman: things in place, so that colleges cannot like actively extract information from it, or you know, spam students with information they didn't ask for. So just by putting the school on your list is not going to send any messaging to the school
Allison Kleiman: that said there is a feature where lots of these college websites and audience included. Schools can sort of pay for what's called an enhanced profile. You saw some of those schools had little like asterisks next to their names.
Allison Kleiman: that means they have a more like robust profile. And there's even an option where students can opt in and say, like, I'm interested, I want you to contact me. And that would be potentially a way of showing demonstrated interest. What I would say is, though, this is.
Allison Kleiman: I don't think that's really the main tool or use for for this website. If you are trying to engage with colleges for the purpose of demonstrating interest, I wouldn't rely just solely on these sort of third party websites. I would do things like
Allison Kleiman: proactively sign up for their mailing list if you're not already on it. Once you're on the mailing list, open the emails that they send you.
Allison Kleiman: If you see they're coming to a local New York City hotel ballroom, and they're having an info session, and you have the time to go. Consider doing that sign up for a virtual tour. All of those things count as demonstrated interest. And II wanna also say, like.
Allison Kleiman: you know, for the for the Skidmore Scattergram that I showed you where it's I said, like they really do care about interacting with the student and making sure they know that you're interested. You don't have to go overboard like like just accepting an interview
Allison Kleiman: invitation if you're offered it. That get counts. That's enough. When we say someone is ignoring or not engaging with a school we truly mean, like they are not opening, messaging. They're not checking their portal. They applied last minute, and like had typos with, they forgot to switch the name of a school in a supplement like things like this. So
Allison Kleiman: it's it's very hard to mess up and I will say. for, as maybe disconcerting as it is.
Allison Kleiman: you also can sort of rest assured that your natural behavior is going to be picked up by the demonstrated interest schools. They are designed to know what interested students look like.
Allison Kleiman: So you don't have to worry too too much about like
Allison Kleiman: making sure it's it's clear your natural actions are going to show them that you're interested, so I wouldn't. I would not overthink it. But but the summary of that is, I do believe students can opt in to being contacted by colleges through naviance. But it's not the only way to do that.
Dina Ingram: Thank you for that.
Dina Ingram: How does sky define reach schools versus target schools versus safety schools? How would we define that?
Allison Kleiman: You know this is a
Allison Kleiman: there's an art and a science to college admissions. So oftentimes the answer to questions is going to be. It depends. And what I mean by that is, you know there are some schools that are what we would call universal reaches or universal likelies. But
Allison Kleiman: oftentimes the answer is going to vary based on the student. So part of it's going to be where the student falls on that Scattergram, you know. Are they in the upper right hand corner.
Allison Kleiman: with extremely high grades, extremely high testing and surrounded by all green. That's a different category than a student who is surrounded by red or a school that that is sort of an all red graph. So for me, personally.
Allison Kleiman: we are trained to be conservative. Right? We want to prepare for a worst case scenario, because what we're trying to avoid is a student or a family who is trusting us.
Allison Kleiman: believing what we're saying.
Allison Kleiman: promising something and then have that not happen. So we're typically gonna be more cautious. Maybe then you want us to be. We're gonna be super realistic because we have seen it all. And we have seen those sort of worst case outcomes as a general ballpark, I would say.
Allison Kleiman: any time a school is admitting a small portion of the pool. It's going to be some version of a reach. Whether it's a far reach or a regular reach. all reaches means you need to be prepared for this, not to work out
Allison Kleiman: a target, I would say, is gonna be a school where we have at least 50% confidence that you should make be meeting the criteria. It all signs. Point to. Yes, it's possible for a wait list. It's possible for a deny. Different things happen different years. But we feel like this is you're in the range right?
Allison Kleiman: And then a likely or a safety school is, gonna be you're not just in the range. You are above the range, you are. There is not a universe in which you can be denied from this place, because you are just so far ahead of what it is they're looking for, or
Allison Kleiman: the acceptance rate is higher. Right? So when I showed you that new pulse graph, it's, you know, their acceptance percentage is higher than Vassar, which is right in the same area. And that was that's was differentiates, a likely from a target. But there is no like set universal definition. These are sort of general buckets that vary based on the students individual criteria.
Dina Ingram: Thank you. Next question is, how accurate is the data in naviance? In other words, does stye make sure that the seniors input their acceptances.
Allison Kleiman: So it's as it's as accurate as it can be. And what I mean by that is, yes, students self report
Allison Kleiman: that said there isn't much motivation to be dishonest or lie, partly because no one can see it while the students in school. So it's not like you have any fear of like someone being able to figure out who you are or there's no there's no benefit right to making up an outcome.
Allison Kleiman: And then on top of that, many, not all, but many schools, do share decisions directly with us. There's a system called sleet, where we can download a lot of decisions. And then some schools will email the counselor and CC. Them directly to let them know which of their students have been admitted, and we always cross check when we have the data, we always cross. Check it. And I would say, I'm sitting here while Miss Damasia is doing this as we speak, and II think I've maybe heard her question
Allison Kleiman: one entry out of the probably 1,000 that she's done so far this year, so it's very, very uncommon to find an error, and usually those are good faith errors that
Allison Kleiman: a student could have just clicked something by accident, but for the most part we do have a way to double check directly with the college, and we also know that it's true in the sense that at the end of the school year. We have to send the final transcript on behalf of the student. So there's no incentive for the student to tell us they're going to a different school than they're really going to, because then their records won't be sent so thankfully. It's an honor system, but it does seem to work.
Dina Ingram: Thank you. So you showed us how to favorite or heart schools in naviance. How do you UN favorite them?
Allison Kleiman: So the student can remove any school they want from the thinking about list
Allison Kleiman: parents and actually you know, I don't know why they built it this way, but but parents can only add schools to the list. They can't remove them, but students can. So you would just, you know, at over dinner or something, have a conversation with your student, or sit together and say, Hey, let's look at this list and and weed out some of the places we've already re ruled out, and then they can, they can be deleted. That's for the thinking about list.
Allison Kleiman: Unfortunately, the website for the applying list. So once a student tells us, they are applied somewhere. Only the school counselor can remove it. Only the college counselor can remove that. And I don't know why they made the system like that. But
Allison Kleiman: they can just email us, and we'll we'll fix their their applying list. But a thinking about list a student can edit.
Dina Ingram: So along those lines, if a parent favorites a college, and it gets saved to the thinking about list. Is there a way for the student to indicate that they agree or don't agree or rank it without actually removing the college from the list.
Allison Kleiman: Yes, so I can't do it here, because I'm signed in as a student, as a parent. But when a student goes to their thinking about list this little interest
Allison Kleiman: section has a dropdown menu where the student is able to edit that said, this is purely internal. So those type of interest categories are truly just for the student. If it helps them stay organized. It's not something they have to do and you can see here this sample here, where some of these have been added by the counselor. Some of them have been added by the parent. But
Allison Kleiman: it's it's a view tab for the parent side of things. It would look slightly different for the student.
Allison Kleiman: so there would be a drop down menu on the students account, but only visible on the parents account. Once the student acts on that right. This interest category. I believe the category is our first choice.
Allison Kleiman: like there is one that allows you to say, first choice, and then the others are sort of different variations underneath that.
Dina Ingram: Okay? So another good question is, can teachers or do the teachers have access to naviance when they are writing their letters of recommendations for students?
Allison Kleiman: So teachers have access to naviance purely as a place to drop their their letter that they've written like, upload the Pdf. And fill out a quick like form on a screen.
Allison Kleiman: Teachers cannot see the surveys, and they cannot see, like any of the data that counselors can see. So for teachers, it's really more transactional. It's just, hey. This student has asked you to write for this particular college so they can see the name of the college that they've been invited to. But that's that's all they can see.
Dina Ingram: Okay? And now, does the guidance counselor see the self discovery and career exploration student responses? Or are these just for the student to explore.
Allison Kleiman: I believe, and I'm I'm saying, believe, because I want. I don't want to misspeak, since my my permissions are different than the school counsel permissions, but I believe they can like ghost in, and they can't edit anything similar to a parent. They can't. They can't change, but they can view something that's already been done. So so yes, a counselor would be able to collaborate like, or see if a student like favorited a career but they wouldn't be able to add or delete
Allison Kleiman: for the student. It would have to be the student doing it from their student side of the account. and are the students able to change their responses after they've submitted them? Yes.
Dina Ingram: okay.
Allison Kleiman: do wait. Listed and accepted mean that those accepted after that they're accepted after first being waitlisted. What is the order in which that happens? And yes, are they defined in ambience? Good question. So yes, when a student is waitlisted. They go in the system and check a box, saying, I've been waitlisted same, for if they're deferred in regular, those are similar sort of
Allison Kleiman: purgatory categories, but they're they're asked to indicate that. And then, if they later are offered a spot off the waitlist. So like, let's say, 2 weeks later, the college says, great news. We have a spot for you. Then they would update to admitted, and the system will remember that they were previously waitlisted, and then got in off the waitlist. So yes, that's what that category refers to. Any green dot means you eventually got in, but it it does have a separate flag if you were ever at any time. Wait, listed.
Dina Ingram: Okay. And now, shifting gears a little bit, I know you showed us
Dina Ingram: on the separate colleges where they can find costs analysis for tuition. But what is the best way to to to determine what a specific school actually costs
Allison Kleiman: good question. And we're unfortunately, in a time period. I wish the media was actually covering this more. We're in an unfortunate time period where the Fafsa is being adjusted, and there are tremendous delays in Fafsa processing and and financial aid packaging. So unfortunately, I actually think this particular window of time. So
Allison Kleiman: some of the net price calculators are gonna be even more estimate estimates than they normally are. Because the Federal formulas has changed and colleges haven't been given the information yet from the Federal government. So it's really been a joy over here. But
Allison Kleiman: we think this is going to be the worst of it, and it's going to get better by the fall, so hopefully for all of you listening. Since you're not seniors it will be better for you, and the the most accurate tool is always going to be the net price calculator. That's specific to the school. Now I have a big caveat which is to say.
Allison Kleiman: any of these calculators. Any of these public facing tools are gonna be based on typical income and assets. Which means that they aren't going to be able to factor in the nuances and some nuances specifically factor in for New York families. Because
Allison Kleiman: things like home ownership are so unique in New York. So it's not a perfect tool, but it's a first step. So we would always suggest doing the net price calculator as a first step and not using the Naviance estimates.
Allison Kleiman: But what I think naviance estimates can give you a clue about is just how large the gaps tend to be. So if you're looking on naviance, and you're seeing really costs that are
Allison Kleiman: for your income band much higher than you'd like them to be. You wanna proceed with caution. And you wanna understand that if you're gonna keep this school on your list, you need to balance it out with a more affordable option that, you know has a sticker price. That's a sticker price and a real price that is closer to your budget. Because, you know, crazy things happen. Your student might end up with a really nuanced special merit scholarship
Allison Kleiman: that is vastly different from what a calculator gives them. And the reverse can happen. We're unfortunately seeing this newer Nyu promise you might have heard about the Nyu promise. They announced that any family making below a hundred $1,000 would get free tuition. To Nyu.
Allison Kleiman: We're finding that our suspicion is correct, that that hasn't quite been the case for a lot of our families, because they are using primary residence against that number. So if the family owns their home or apartment even if your income is low, they are not honoring that. So you know, there's always gonna be nuances, and you wanna have some backup options. But
Allison Kleiman: the net price calculator is for the moment the best like initial screening tool. And then, if you think you have a unique sort? Circumstance? We would recommend you talk directly to the college financial Aid office in advance and say, I'm a pro prospective student don't call them now. They're really busy this month. But say, I'm a prospective student. I want to try to get a ballpark figure. What number do you think I should expect? And you see what they say?
Dina Ingram: Okay, now, this might involve some of the tools like super match. But can you request for naviance to list colleges that specialize in the area of interest that your child has.
Allison Kleiman: Yes, so let's go to colleges.
Allison Kleiman: And there's kind of various tools. You can actually use to sort of achieve this. But I think one easy one would be. If you're in the
Allison Kleiman: advanced search tool. you can go to majors.
and you can search for let's say you wanted actuarial science.
Allison Kleiman: Did I spell it right? Yes, you can click on that.
Allison Kleiman: Say, add.
Allison Kleiman: and then show the matches, and it's gonna show the 144 colleges that have an undergraduate major in X rail science. So that's one way that you could do it again like this stuff is
Allison Kleiman: all based on publicly available data. So if a program has added or deleted over the past, let's say, 24 months. It's possible this could be slightly out of date.
Allison Kleiman: but for the most part it should give you a really good sort of first screen or tool to see what's offered or not. Bear in mind that also some niche majors some niche programs are not gonna be majors. They might be a minor or a concentration within a major. So a search tool like this, a filter tool might not catch every single one of them. But it's a very, very good place to start and what you can find is, once you discover a campus that feels like a good fit, you can build the rest of your list and say, You know, I really liked the feel of this campus. What are some things that I
like the best? And what other schools have those criteria?
Okay.
Dina Ingram: Now, looking at the scatter grams, I know you spent some time on on those helping us to understand them.
Dina Ingram: at the top. There the acceptance rate number at the top of the Scattergram page is that based on Stuyvesant's acceptances? Or is it for all applicants to that college for that year.
Allison Kleiman: So I'm going to go. Bring us to a scattergram. So we can see. Do you mean this, I think. Do they mean this?
Dina Ingram: Do you think? I think that they're talking about the scatter brand? But but at the top, I mean, these are
Allison Kleiman: these are actual averages. So it may be the one that you're speaking. Yeah, I think it must be the one at the top cause the actual scattered. But I think you mean this? And so what I what I didn't show you, but I don't know if you can see it on your screen. There's a little like
Allison Kleiman: teal button here, and it explains that this acceptance rate is determined by comparing the total number of students who applied, and the total number of students who are accepted in a given year, and that is for our for our school.
Allison Kleiman: So it's just for Stuyvesant. Then right? Right?
Dina Ingram: Okay.
Dina Ingram: is there a to do checklist with timelines covering the college application process.
Allison Kleiman: I don't know if they mean within naviance itself, or one from the college office, so so individual counselors can assign tasks. You'll see here tasks for my school. So some counselors could choose to assign to do lists. But I would say, as a as an overarching department or school. We don't
Allison Kleiman: really focus on this too too much.
Allison Kleiman: partly because our students are very like busy and overwhelmed and giving them additional things to monitor doesn't usually go well. So while we don't necessarily use the task section of naviance, a student could, if they, if they wanted to, use, like the goals feature or the journal feature to like.
Allison Kleiman: take notes or remind themselves of to dos or things like that, so they can do like at their own internal list. But I would say instead, is.
Allison Kleiman: the reminders are really gonna come from Mr. Macris. So you can see here he sends like periodic messages. These happen to be a lot because we're sort of in peak, junior planning time. It's not typically gonna be this, many emails for for each grade level each year. But you'll see that they sort. He sort of like highlights, deadlines, and information as is relevant. So like
Allison Kleiman: it's gonna be hard. If you're a student who reads your emails, it's gonna be really hard to fall behind, because we are sort of repeating things over and over and then in the handbook. So I'll try to bring that up while I'm talking.
Allison Kleiman: But the Handbook also has a timeline. That sort of breaks down.
Allison Kleiman: Let me see if I can pull it. Oh, that's Spanish. Sorry, but but
Allison Kleiman: long story short is, it's it's much harder to mess up than you think. You really would II honestly think you'd have to sort of intentionally ignore our messages. Which we don't want you to do.
Dina Ingram: I was just gonna say, I thought it was gonna open the window, but it's a download. It's gonna be hard to show you on the screen. But
Allison Kleiman: if you look in the Handbook, you will see us sort of step by step.
Dina Ingram: Yeah, you can also see the Handbook in all of 5 languages on the Talos blog or in the document hub. So it's a quick access right there for our college handbook, the current one for class of 2025.
Allison Kleiman: So does notion feature just schools within the Us. Or are there also schools abroad featured on great question. No, it's a global global website. So I'll just quickly sort of pull up, Miguel for you to to prove to you that there's other schools. But no, there's
Allison Kleiman: if it's a accredited school anywhere on the globe, it should be found here.
Dina Ingram: Okay.
Allison Kleiman: so you say, we have applicants.
Dina Ingram: the recommendation letters that are uploaded by teachers in naviance. Are they specific to a certain college or that, can they be submitted to multiple colleges?
Allison Kleiman: So the answer is, it depends like always, it's it's both. So the student has to choose. If it's a general Rec to go everywhere, or if it's a specific rec assigned to one school. Now the caveat there is the content is never specific. To a school. The content is always general, but there are some schools that only allow a maximum of one letter, in which case we need the student to assign whichever one letter they prefer.
Allison Kleiman: If they prefer one over the other. If they don't care at all, they can just make both request, general, and the first one that gets submitted will go. But some students care about which letter goes. So if you're a type of student who has a preference. You would assign an individual teacher to that individual school. But the majority of letters go everywhere, because very few schools limit to one.
Dina Ingram: Okay, this is a great question for our families to understand is the navience Gpa. That they see on that page there about their student? Is it? That is that the overall Gpa or the sky? Gpa.
Allison Kleiman: it's there.
Allison Kleiman: I mean, those are the same thing. But it's it's the cumulative Gpa, so the way you find that is, you can go here to about me home.
Allison Kleiman: and I believe it is oh, sorry I lost it on the page account. I think it's under account right here. Gpa, under academic. So this pretend student has a 91. That's an unweighted cumulative Gpa, so it's all credits that are credit bearing on the transcript. So if you had middle school credits, those are included.
Dina Ingram: So I just wanna clarify cause like I said, Miss Climbin is new to Stai the sky. Gpa is the the what we determine your ap placements in courses for so the one that you're seeing in naviance is just as Ms. Kliman stated. It is the overall Gpa. That you do see, that agrees with your transcript. It is not the one that we only use sty courses for that you
Dina Ingram: taken inside of Stuyvesant and used for ap placement. So that Styga, what you're seeing on naviance is your overall, Gpa. That's on your transcript, and that's what colleges will receive.
Dina Ingram: They will. We will not make that distinction. Colleges are not going to get us die. Gpa. They're going to get your overall. Gpa.
Allison Kleiman: thank you so much. And and as your student gets older, the impact of freshman of the eighth grade classes goes down because they have more and more classes from sty. So for most seniors, it's it's almost negligible.
Dina Ingram: And here's another great question. Because it's an asset in in naviance that we use? Does naviance provide information about merit, scholarships for individual colleges?
Allison Kleiman: Good question. So we can go to the colleges tab, and you can go to this right hand section here, scholarships and money. And there is this section here about college specific scholarships. So if you click on this
Allison Kleiman: it is gonna show you, and it imports for your student. What the test scores and Gpa are. Now, I will give a huge caveat, and this is just a national problem. There is no conversion nationally between 100 point scale and 4.0 scale, but naviance has like invented their own, and I'll show you here what they've invented.
Allison Kleiman: I don't know that I would use this because you can see here they call a 90 a 3.7 they call a 94, a 4 point O. And a 97 a 4 point O like I'm not.
Allison Kleiman: I would not ascribe to this exact
Allison Kleiman: conversion chart. But for the sake of general information you can see here the student Gpa. And the test score, and then you can skim and see various schools that would give this particular student potential merit aid. So yes, you do have the ability to sort of skim this again, I would use this a little bit with a grain of salt, because
Allison Kleiman: schools can change from year to year. Criteria can change, and they don't tell you the number of awards they give. So some of this is gonna be automatic money. And some of this is maybe that they're gonna give 12 students at St. Joseph's $25,000 per year. But it's it's real. It is a potential real scholarship. But it's a nice tool, especially if you're early in the process, and you wanna do a lot of research. It's really nice.
Allison Kleiman: You can also do a national scholarship search for outside scholarships. So these are not college specific scholarships. These are just general scholarships, and you can filter based on your demographics and information and then find matches. Through. Sally may, if you want
Dina Ingram: great. Thank you.
Dina Ingram: So we saw that the common app is linked there. We saw the symbol, you know, on naviance. But how do students send information to colleges that do not use the common app.
Allison Kleiman: So, students, if you're not applying on the common application, you apply on whatever platform the college uses. So like Georgetown has its own platform. The Cuny system has its own platform. So the student completes a separate application on a separate website. But
Allison Kleiman: for very few schools is the student ever sending anything other than their application? Us in the college office are the ones that are sending official documents. We're sending transcripts and letters. Students never have access to their letters. And while they have their talos transcript, and some colleges like international schools, will sometimes ask you to upload your transcript, and they do accept the Talos Transcript. That's unofficial.
Allison Kleiman: But for the most part you don't have to worry about document transmission. That's why you've entered in an audience. That's how the college office knows that you applied somewhere, and that's how we know when to send your items. You'll indicate to us, or your student will indicate to us the round of admission and their deadline, and we're in charge of taking care of sending the documents. So
Allison Kleiman: you don't have to worry. Ii recognize the question, though, cause you're just curious how it happens. But we usually, if we can't use naviance, and if it. If they don't allow electronic transfers on naviance, we use whatever platform the school wants us to use so often times. It's a platform called slate. Occasionally there'll be a dropbox for us to use. It varies by school, but
Allison Kleiman: I would conservatively say that probably 97% of documents are sent within the naviance platform.
Okay?
Dina Ingram: So we saw that a lot of the scatter scatter grams are based on the scores that are input into naviance. So if a student has taken the sat more than once. does naviance automatically? Take the highest superscore or on file? Or is it a self? Reported one, and can you clarify? What exactly is the SAT. And the scatter grams
Allison Kleiman: that is basing it on great question. Naviance does superscore. So they're gonna take the highest math and the highest evidence, base reading and writing, and make that the the blue circle on the graph. I also did forget forget to say someone had asked on the Google form we sent out previously about what to do about middle school sats. So if you did, Cty and you had an sat score that you took from an early exam in middle school. That is not something you need to report in naviance.
Allison Kleiman: You're welcome to technically like it is your form. If you, if you want to enter it in, you can. But ultimately, colleges are not gonna accept that for admissions purposes. So it doesn't really tell you all that much. But if you're if you're proud of the score, if you want to put it in, you're allowed to, but it would ultimately not really serve very much purpose. We would just have you wait until your PSA. Or your real sat
Allison Kleiman: and use that once you're a sophomore or a junior?
Dina Ingram: Okay, we've had this question a few times, so I'll ask it. Can the students see their recommendation? Letters?
Allison Kleiman: Good question. No, they can't and if you wanna even go further, we also can't see them. It's completely confidential. So even Staff cannot see their colleagues letters. So it's it's a 100% private process.
Allison Kleiman: the system accepts the document. And we can. We can send it. We can like click for the file to be sent, but we actually can't open it. So it is totally private. Students can't see it, and counselors cannot see it.
Dina Ingram: Thank you so does Styer naviance offer guidance? As to what individual schools look for besides Gpa. And SAT.
Dina Ingram: So would they be able to find that in naviance any information?
Allison Kleiman: Yes, so so I like I was sharing. Let me try to find
Allison Kleiman: an example. But there is a little like Mini common data set summary on the admissions page. So when we type in a school
Allison Kleiman: and we go to admissions and we scroll down.
Allison Kleiman: you can see this application requirements here.
Allison Kleiman: and they sort of rank or or or show you what is most important to their school.
Allison Kleiman: And different colleges are gonna have different categories. Emphasized, put it that way. And then on the application factors, you can see that this school happens. This was a bad example, because they clearly think everything is very important. I'll try to find a different sample in a minute, but you can see like they literally count everything. And and they're saying like.
Allison Kleiman: tell us, tell us as much as you can about yourself, because we are counting at all other schools. Let me try to find a different that's unusual. Let me try to find another school. That is a little more nuanced. Let's try Wesleyan.
Allison Kleiman: and just see if they're slightly more specific on their common data set.
Allison Kleiman: Yeah, so this is a little more slightly more clear about things. They care about a lot.
Allison Kleiman: a lot, a lot.
Allison Kleiman: a little bit and not at all. So you know, you can see here. This is a place that isn't really that caring about demonstrated interest, because campus visit is not even considered at least what they're publicly saying in the in the common data set. So this type of tool you could look at again. This is a third party website. So I do think a superior place is to look directly on the common data set for this college. But this is a great place to start because Googling, every single common data set is, gonna take you a lot of time. So you could absolutely see this at a glance to sort of see how they factor
Allison Kleiman: things. And and bear in mind like this is all gonna be a little bit out of date, because you can see here that ethnicity is still
Allison Kleiman: as a factor. And and as we know, colleges are not going to be factoring that in anymore. But yeah, you can. You can sort of tell different priorities. Let's say, institutional priorities of the school. By looking at a lot of this information.
Dina Ingram: Okay? And how do the students know if their counselors sent the letter of recommendations? Do they get confirmations?
Allison Kleiman: They do so when the student I don't think this has any applying to, does it? Let's see. Yes, so when the student is a junior, or I'm sorry a senior in the fall. If they go to their applying list. So this is the list that this pretend student has told us that they're doing
this office materials. Section. And so this is visible to parents, too. It's not just students. Anyone can log in and look at the office materials column. And when something has been submitted, it's going to say, look like this initial material is submitted. If it hasn't been sent yet, it's still going to say pending.
Dina Ingram: Thank you. Here's a good question. Not necessarily. I know it's not related to naviance, but it's good for families to know this. Does it matter for colleges? If an sat was taken in sophomore or junior year, so maybe we can just clarify
Allison Kleiman: an sat versus a Psat and great great point. So the naviance is going to show whatever the
Allison Kleiman: higher level test is. So if a student has an SAT, it's gonna default to the SAT. If a student's a sophomore, and only has a PSAT. 10. It's gonna show that colleges, though again, colleges can't see naviance. But when it comes to applying the only official score you'd ever send them is a real SAT. Or a real a CT. The timing of it we would recommend taking it in the Junior year.
Allison Kleiman: But we know that everybody's different and has different needs. So if you're someone who took an official test really early. as long as it was within the time frame that the college deems appropriate, you would still be able to use the score.
Allison Kleiman: I believe, a sophomore Year test for most colleges, they would accept it, but something before that they likely would not accept particularly right now, when we're transitioning from the paper test to the digital test. If you took something in middle school that's never gonna be seen by a college
Allison Kleiman: and and we would typically encounter students who are testing during the eleventh grade year.
Dina Ingram: Okay? So I'm just looking for through the questions that we had submitted in advance to see if they were make sure they were all covered, and I think that you did incorporate most of these in your presentation already.
Dina Ingram: So if
Dina Ingram: we're almost pretty much through the questions that are all revolving around naviance. I know that there have been some questions that are really about financial aid. And
Dina Ingram: you know, specific. I just wanna mention to our families that are listening, that if you have questions that are specific to your student, please do, do not hesitate to reach out to your college counselor. If you are a junior, if you're in the lower grades, you can also reach out to the school counselor
Dina Ingram: for some answers as well. And I think you did mention this, Miss Klein. At what point do our Sto do? Our does our college office work
Allison Kleiman: with our students. But maybe you could reiterate that. So it's clear at what point you're getting a college counselor, sure, sure, sure. Sure. So I think the nice part about why I wanted to work at Stuyvesant. And and something about the building is you really do have 2 dedicated adults for for all students and all grades. Everybody has a school counselor, and everybody is assigned to a caseload of a college counselor.
Allison Kleiman: the asterisk, or the the sort of with that said I think it is only fair to admit that in the fall we really are prioritizing twelfth grade students.
and in the spring the bulk of our time is prioritized with eleventh grade students. That's because we have one on one meetings with each of those students for a full class period. So we don't have the ability to hold like really extended conversations with ninth or tenth graders that said, we have office hours. So any student from any grade level can drop in during those office hours if the student doesn't have a class.
Allison Kleiman: But our in our email inboxes are open. So please don't be shy about messaging your college counselor, even if you are not in eleventh or twelfth grade.
Allison Kleiman: That, said the the traditional sort of triage, is that the school counselors answer a lot of underclassmen questions, and then it sort of transitions over to us in the eleventh and twelfth grades. But
Allison Kleiman: our our goal is to get you an answer. So if if you're really looking for information, please don't be shy. And because you mentioned the financial aid stuff, I also wanna remind you we did have a financial aid presentation earlier this year. For the current seniors
Allison Kleiman: and the recorded session and slides have been posted in Talos and in the Navy's documents. So if you did want to review this year's information, the caveat being the Fafsa changed this year. So if you are a ninth or tenth grade family. I honestly wouldn't educate yourself too too much about financial aid yet, because the entire system has changed and is changing
Allison Kleiman: as we speak. So sit tight. There will be future presentations for your grade level. But I wouldn't be too nervous about it, because it's in the future, and you can't control it quite yet. But I love talking about financially. So email us anytime, you have questions because we love you love answering questions about it.
Dina Ingram: Thank you, Miss Klein. So I think we're going to wrap up our session. I wanna thank you again for such a comprehensive overview that you gave tonight, Ms climbin and make mention that we are recording this session.
Dina Ingram: So we will make it available in the weekly Update. I know we've had a lot of questions. On whether or not we'll report will be giving your recording and the slide deck, and we will link that. I'm sure it will be put in the document, hub here on naviance as well as in Taos. So you will be receiving that, and thank all of you for joining us tonight and giving us your questions and your attention tonight
Dina Ingram: and and we'll be wrapping up. So everybody have a good evening. And again, if you had, if you had a question tonight that wasn't answered, feel free to reach out.
Allison Kleiman: Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Good night.
Dina Ingram: Good night.