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College counseling at Punahou School (5)
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Now, let’s plant some “seeds,” which is a list put together by the student, his parents, and his counselor, for colleges that “match” the student’s needs. This list will grow first (expanding), and then shrink down to 6-8 schools for the student to actually apply.
Mr. Obenchain started to introduce 15 colleges, most of them I never heard of. He would briefly go over each of them. My son wrote down the name of each school on a pink paper in the left column.
To the right of the pink paper, there is a column for “Admission odds*.” The * is noted at the bottom of the paper for codes to be used for this column: (L) for Likely (90-95% likelihood of acceptance), (P) for Probably (75%), (C) for Core (50% likelihood), and (R) for Reach (5-50% likelihood).
Then, Mr. Obenchain took out a “crystal ball,” a 3-inch-thick “Data Book,” a binder that lists all the colleges with enough (to be statistically meaningful) Punahou students admitted during 2006-2009. Each page is for a college, say UW (U. of Washington). The far-left column lists from top to bottom GPAs (in a descending order), 4.0, 3.75, 3.5, etc. The second column shows the data for students admitted each year, so each “9” represents one student admitted in 2009. To the right, there is a column showing the number of applicants who were declined and the (likely) reasons. So, for the same GPA (usually at the lower end of “admitted”), one could be rejected.
At the bottom of each page, three SAT score ranges are given for the middle 50% accepted by the college. This info is available to the public at the College Board Web site.
Mr. O would show the page, say for Lawrence Univ. We can tell what the range of GPAs is for Punahou students admitted by Lawrence in the past, which GPAs may be too low, and the school’s middle 50% SAT. My son would be asked to pick a code for his chance/odds to be accepted by this school.
At the end of this exercise, I saw mostly “L” and two “C” on the pink paper. There was not even one “R.” The reason is the person who selected these “seeds” knew my son well not to add, say Yale, on the list.
Then, Mr. O showed us how to grow the list using Naviance, which helps to track each student’s progress on college application.
My son logged into his account, and there is a list of schools selected by his father and his counselor. Yes, parents have access to this account to keep an eye on their child, so does the college counselor.
The system offers lots of tools and info. Mr. O quickly showed us how to tell if the school is a teaching college or research type. For each school on my son’s list, the system will recommend a list of “similar schools.” So, one can spend lots of time surfing Naviance…
(To be continued.)
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-306792-308499.html
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