By: Maira Ramos
College application season is here and in full swing for many seniors at MHS. For freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, there’s an ample amount of time to brainstorm post-high school plans. The MHS administration has provided students with a new college and career readiness tool called Naviance to assist students in their future plans. However, is this tool as helpful as it is advertised to be?
Upon the first log-in, the website appears very barren because students must spend time personalizing their Naviance account through various insightful assessments and surveys. There seems to be a never ending amount of assessments across the website and most assessments take about seven to ten minutes. This may be a good thing for those with free time, but inconvenient for those who are always busy with schoolwork, community service, and other activities.
When Naviance was first introduced, the “College SuperMatch” feature was suggested for students to try out. This feature allows students to narrow down their choice of colleges based on their preferences in different criterias such as location, academics, admission rates, athletics, and several others. It is basically a replica of the “College Search” feature on the College Board’s Big Future website. The only difference is that Naviance has a record of your GPA, SAT, and ACT scores which is used to compare to each college’s average GPA, SAT, and ACT score. It’s not much of a difference, but it is convenient information when guessing your chances of being admitted.
An interesting feature of Naviance is “Roadtrip Nation.” It starts with yet another assessment, though a short one, about your interests. The end result is an archive of profiles of people who are successful in the careers related to your interests. Each profile contains a biography and videos that give a quick insight into each person’s personal background and career. There is a wide collection of profiles in different careers ranging from Actor/Comedian Craig Robinson to Governor of Hawaii David Ige. I personally think that this is a unique and valuable feature since you are able to preview different careers and the work that is put into reaching those careers.
All the features mentioned so far are fairly helpful to students who are unsure of their post-high school plans but what about those who already have it all planned out? The “National Scholarship Search” provides a specific list of scholarships that a student qualifies for based on their test scores, interest, career goals, and personal information. The scholarships may range from $500 to $50,000 and have different requirements and deadlines. This feature is definitely helpful to students of all kinds of financial situations.
How helpful Naviance will be surely depends on each student and how far along they are in their college and career plans. It should also be taken into consideration that it is still a new program that MHS is adjusting to. But overall, I would say that once you take some extra time to personalize your account, Naviance could be a useful tool for navigating your future plans.
