College Kickstart Sneak Peek for High School College Counselors

Our coverage universe expands to over 400 institutions in 2017 with the addition of more regional colleges, likely school options and institutions with unique characteristics like Cooper Union (half-tuition), The College of Idaho (PEAK Program) and the University of Mary Washington (Public LAC). As always, you can take advantage of our tags to quickly add schools to a list, whether they be test optional, STEM, Jesuit, or Colleges that Change Lives. Keep those suggestions coming!

The academic profile changes in two ways for 2017:

• SAT scores adopt the new format (SAT-ERW and SAT-M). With the old SAT format now in the rear view mirror for students, we've decided to bite the bullet and convert our college SAT admissions data to the new format using concordance tables provided by the College Board.

• Weighted GPA support. As the number of schools we cover has grown, so too have the number of ways we've found GPA getting reported in the Common Data Set. Some colleges report unweighted GPA, others report weighted, yet others report a composite of whatever has been submitted by applicants. What's worse is that you have to figure this out yourself because it's not defined anywhere in the CDS! To get to the bottom of this, we've reached out to 200+ institutions that report GPA in the Common Data Set and gotten clarity on the form each of theirs takes. With this covered, both weighted GPA (5.0 scale) and unweighted GPA (4.0 scale) may now be entered as part of a student's academic profile. Depending on how each of the colleges on the student's list reports GPA, if at all, we'll use the appropriate one to make the comparison.

We've introduced some refinements to our grading system to capture more nuance and provide clearer instructions for how to balance a list when needed. Unlikely schools are now accounted for in the list grade, and when assessing academic performance College Kickstart is now set up to take the better of a student's SAT or ACT score when both are provided.

One of the most exciting capabilities we'll be introducing this January is our new local context option. Local context—as opposed to national context—uses your high school's historical admissions data to drive how College Kickstart categorizes schools for your students. For schools where you have sufficient admissions history, it's a powerful way to fully capture your school's admission "bump" and reflect it in your student college plans.

We’re also introducing the ability to capture outcomes for each of your seniors. You’ll be able to record outcomes, need and merit-based aid received, and even track hooked applicants if desired.

Our new reporting feature makes it easy to communicate the impact your team is having on the college planning process and outcomes. Because we know the order of each student’s list, how they’re applying and how each school is categorized, College Kickstart delivers a much richer and more nuanced view of results and the journey to get there.

Many of you asked for the ability to print personalized plans for your clients, and we’re pleased to make this a reality for you. Come January, all College Kickstart for Counselors subscribers licensed for 10 or more students will be able to take advantage of a PDF plan generator that lets you deliver professional-looking college plans to your clients. The report closely follows the format of our web application and can be customized with your logo and tailored commentary for your students.