Sneak Peek for High School College Counselors (2025)

Our coverage universe now exceeds 750 four-year U.S. based institutions as we continue to enhance regional coverage based on customer feedback.

We now also cover admission profiles for over 500 departments across 65 institutions, including new adds for Howard University, Florida State, all three Rutgers campuses and Baylor University.

For 2025, our coverage of University of California campuses goes "next level" by leveraging newly released UC data by academic discipline.

While we've long provided UC departmental rates, reporting conventions have been inconsistent across campuses, both in terms of depth of coverage and frequency of reporting.

The recently released data allows us to leverage admit rates AND newly introduced mid 50% GPA ranges specific to each campus and academic discipline.

With consistent coverage across all UC campuses and the new GPA data, you'll benefit from more precise school categorization, even in the absence of local context.

Newly reported data from the University of California also gives us our first glimpse into how academic rigor impacts admissibility at a national level.

The 2025 edition of College Kickstart incorporates this data by allowing UC campuses to be added to a list based on residency and three tiers of honors course count: 10+, 5-9.9 and <5 yearlong courses between grades 10-12.

In the absence of local context, it's a powerful way to assess applicant admissibility—especially if your school employs an unweighted GPA. For example, for Fall 2023, 21% of resident applicants to UCLA with 10+ honors courses were admitted vs. 5% for those with 5-9.9 honors courses and 1% for those with less than 5 honors courses.

A new tag is now available to identify schools with great nursing programs (NURSE).

The 2025 edition of College Kickstart also includes a new minimum GPA capability that automatically categorizes a school as an unlikely if a student's GPA falls below a minimum GPA threshold.

There are three types of thresholds:

• Institutional. Roughly 17% of the schools in our coverage universe have stated minimum GPA requirements. For example, the University of California requires a weighted GPA of 3.0 or higher for residents and 3.4 or higher for non-residents.

• Common Data Set. When using national data, it is also possible to identify a minimum threshold from the Common Data Set if a GPA histogram is provided. For example, if the lowest non-zero GPA tier is 2.50-2.99, we can use 2.50 as the minimum threshold.

• Local Context. When using local context, we can automatically determine the minimum GPA based on the profile you select at configuration. For example, if you select the Local Admitted profile, and the lowest admitted GPA for that profile is 2.85, this will become the threshold.

Minimum GPA enforcement is a great way to ensure applicants with particularly weak GPAs are being counseled appropriately, regardless of school selectivity.

Ask and you shall receive! You can now specify whether you want to include the Early Strategy, Action Plan and/or Appendices when generating a personalized plan PDF. Simply check/uncheck the boxes in each section to customize your layout.

If you're in favor of allowing students to apply early to unlikely schools, then take advantage of a new "No Regrets" override we're testing for 2025. When enabled, College Kickstart will no longer restrict unlikely schools to regular decision and allow early decision and early action to be considered with an appropriate caveat.

Note: to activate this feature, please send an email to your relationship manager or to support@collegekickstart.com.

Wishing the Categorization Matrix reflected counselor adjustments?

Then take advantage of our new adjusted display option. When you enable this option, which we're also testing in 2025, we'll shift an adjusted school from its original position in the matrix to its adjusted one.

Bear in mind that this is an approximation based on the type of adjustment made. For example, if an unlikely school has been adjusted to a target, we'll shift it down diagonally to the right. If an unlikely is adjusted to a reach, we'll shift it right one cell if the reason is academic and down one cell if the reason is related to selectivity.

Note: to activate this feature, please send an email to your relationship manager or to support@collegekickstart.com.

One of the great conveniences of CK 360™ is the ability to analyze historical admission trends with ease. New for 2025 is the ability to create custom groups.

Custom groups make it easy to analyze school cohorts of interest to you without having to manually enter in each school each time you wish to do an analysis. The possibilities include:

• A custom index of most popular schools
• University of California campuses
• Rankings breakdowns from sources not already covered in CK 360™, such as Forbes, Wall Street Journal or Times Higher Education

Once you've created a custom group, it can be used to filter your historical results in any CK 360™ visualization displaying the "Group" dropdown.

CK 360™ is a fee-based option

Also new in CK 360™ for 2025 is the ability to overlay overall national admission rates on top of overall admit rates for your school in the Historical Trends visualization. This will give you an easy way to communicate your results within the context of national trends for selected institutions in your analysis.

CK 360™ is a fee-based option

In search of a better way to understand how score submission impacts admissibility? Then take advantage of our new Score Submission visualization.

Assuming you're capturing score submission in your outcomes reporting, this visualization breaks down score submission rates by academic quintile and calculates admission rate differences between those submitting scores and those going test optional.

Designed to let you explore results from the aggregate level down to specific institution, it's a great way to glean trends and refine your test optional recommendation strategy.

CK 360™ is a fee-based option