With the end of the school year quickly approaching, most seniors have made their final decisions about where to attend college this fall.

Now that these decisions have been finalized, seniors are required to post their final choices on Naviance, the website through which students can access statistics about the acceptances and rejections of past Schreiber students into particular schools. Naviance, which students also use to send applications to colleges, asks seniors to upload information once they receive college decisions about which schools they were accepted to and which schools they were rejected from.

While this process is intended to be anonymous and to help future students assess the statistics at particular schools, it actually provides inaccurate representations of the information and is a violation of the privacy of students who may not be comfortable sharing their personal decisions.

One problem with Naviance is that it only displays a student’s GPA and SAT and ACT scores, measures that do not accurately represent student achievement.

“Naviance can be misleading for those who are applying to that particular school,” said senior Ashley Oelbaum.

“Some students think that if they fall into a certain range on the scattergram, then they will or won’t get in. They incorrectly rely on the Naviance data to determine their chances of being accepted into a school.”

Colleges do not only evaluate an applicant based on SAT scores or GPA; they also take into account a student’s extracurricular activities and personality. A student is so much more than a dot on a scattergram chart.

“Naviance gives a good range of those accepted to a particular school from Schreiber alone,” said senior Nina Devas. “However, just because a student does not fall into the range on the graph, it does not mean the student will not be accepted. Colleges look at an applicant as a whole person, not just their range on a chart.”

Another flaw of the Naviance system is that it only compares a student to the limited number of previous seniors who applied to that school.

Since Naviance only shows data from Schreiber applicants, it does not completely reflect the college’s standards for admission.

“Naviance only gives a percentage based on the number of students applying from Schreiber,” said Oelbaum. “For this reason, the scattergram chart displayed on Naviance is not accurate. A more precise data chart would include students from all districts who applied previous years to that specific college.”

Being compelled to use Naviance could also be considered a violation of privacy.

Students should not have to post their college decisions if they do not feel comfortable posting their choices. Even if the system allows applicants to remain anonymous, students may feel uncomfortable reporting their college choices.

Rejection, or even acceptance, is a very personal matter that should not have to be shared online.

“I think that many of my fellow seniors would not feel comfortable posting their decisions online, especially if they were rejected,” said senior Jennifer Kim.

It is clearly not necessary to post college results on Naviance. The Naviance system provides an inaccurate representation that misleads students to base their decisions solely on data from past Schreiber students.

“College admission is not something that should be publicly posted for all other students to reference. It is a private matter that does not apply to other students, so the school should not require applicants to post their results in a public setting,” said Kim.

Also, it puts students in an uncomfortable position in which they are required to report such personal matters. The results of the college application process should remain in the hands of the applicant and the applicant alone.