College Kickstart Sneak Peek for Independent 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 it be test optional, STEM, Jesuit, or a College that Changes Lives. Keep your 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.

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.

Check out the gallery below to see how the report is organized.