College Access Resources for
Hotchkiss Families
Thank you for attending the presentation to the BIPOC group. Please find resources for successful college admissions here.
Key ideas
Students are under-resourced in many ways, even when they attend highly resourced high schools. This may lead to students attending colleges where they are not an academic, financial, and/or social fit, leading them to not graduate or take more time to graduate. You can ensure that your student graduates on-time with funding, but that starts with where they are applying.
steps to take
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Get context about your school. Find out where other students are going and what a typical profile might look like.
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Apply early. Even if you designate the application as “regular decision,” still submit it in September or October.
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Reverse engineer from September.
Since you are submitting the application early in the academic year, the transcript should be done-ish by the end of the 11th grade. Don’t save classes that a college will want to see for 12th grade.
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Add schools that do not use the CSS. You will not be able to avoid this completely so make sure some of the schools you are applying to do not use the CSS for financial decisions.
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Be mindful of the coursework. Colleges want to see Calculus-readiness. This can come from actually taking Calculus or other combinations such as Pre-Calculus and Physics. They also want to see good writing. This can come from AP US History or AP Eng Lang and Comp. But there are other combinations that can work.
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Seek support. While we would love to share all of the tips here, we have to save a few for clients. If you have a different situation, please get in touch!
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Navega is powered by Truth Bridge. This means that we use proprietary data to make decisions. This data comes from decades of research and trends rather than what may have worked for an individual student with a specific-use case. This is why we still have a 100% success rate.
Families requested the data after viewing a sampling during the presentation. Because this is proprietary, some data is excluded including updated data for 2026 (this data represents information from 2025).
Information was collected from IPEDS and other public sources and research.
A Special Thank You