Senior year brings on stress. Students have to test, apply, and worry about paying for college, all while trying to keep up their grades. Naviance, the new college exploration and application program, promises to make the process easier.

Every senior attended an information session, led by guidance counselor Ms. Paula Larson, to learn about the college and career readiness tool.  Similar to the tools offered at CollegeBoard.org, the program helps students plan their futures, from skills assessments to college applications.

Naviance offers FCPS more than the free College Board tools.  “Naviance has the capacity for us to upload everything electronically. Naviance calls this EDocs, and it gives you access to all of your transcript information online. Naviance takes everything a step further than College Board,” said FCPS Counseling and Student Support coordinator, Janet Shipman.

Naviance provides many useful tools such as a college matching tool, scholarship searches, and school statistics for the student or parent to estimate the chances of getting in to different schools.

“Eventually, Naviance will be implemented in schools as early as 6th grade. All of the four year plans  and career match projects that you complete in middle school that have always been pen and paper will be done electronically,” said Shipman.

“In the future this is how our students are going to apply to colleges. In other words they will use this as a platform, and they’ll be able to upload their things. We’ll be able to upload our documents and then it will go out to all of the schools they are applying to,” Larson said.

“My biggest fear about applying to college is not getting everything done. I like the college selection feature on Naviance because it tells you the deadlines and what every college needs so you can keep track of what you still have to do,” said senior Neal Roberts.

“However the various schools accept applications, whether it be through their website or Common Application, the Naviance people will make it happen,” Larson continued. This means that as opposed to going to the school’s individual website, as students have in that past, everything will be accomplished through this program.

One tool in Naviance is the “Strengths Explorer.”  “Right now we are focusing a lot on the various surveys that you can do to see what options you have for the future.  I did mine [Strengths Explorer Survey] and I came out to be an organizer and caring . . .I look at that, and it’s very similar to what I did 30 years ago in college. ,” Larson said.

Naviance also offers a feature called Roadtrip Nation. Larson said this is one of her favorite tools on the site. In this feature, people were interviewed, not about their jobs, but about their journeys to get there. One of Larson’s favorite interviews is with a man who went all the way to finishing law school and becoming a lawyer before he realized that he did not want to be a lawyer. He then went back to school and became a baker.

These short interviews are helpful because they show students that there are many paths to getting where they want to go.  Also, what a student thinks he or she wants to do now, may not be what he or she wants to do later. These, along with the various quizzes and surveys, help people see what options they have for their future.

So far, students seem to love Naviance. Senior Ashley Zink has already been accepted to WVU, but she said, “If I were to apply to more schools, I would definitely use Naviance. I love the Strengths Explorer survey because at the end it gives you suggestions for jobs based on your results. It came up with things that I never even thought about when deciding what I want to major in.”

Still in the pilot stage, students are not yet able to utilize Naviance to its fullest potential.  It helps keep students updated, connects them to scholarship opportunities, and eventually will be how everyone  applies to college.  A future addition will include access to transcript information.