This year a new tool was rolled out to seniors to help them as they plan for their next steps in their post-high school lives. This tool is called Naviance which is a website for students to plan for college and careers. 

Naviance has many different tools to help students, allowing students to research colleges and careers. They are able to compare their GPAs, standardized test scores and other stats to data from other students at St. Charles North who have applied and been admitted in the past to the school they are interested in. 

They are also able to look at various colleges and narrow down the list of schools by inputting what type of school they are looking for. “If you like this type of school, this small school located a couple hours from home with this major, by knowing that you’re going to eliminate thousands of options and narrow your search quite a bit and save a lot of time,” said Matthew Kirby, counselor.

Students are able to research careers and take career assessments to determine what they would be better suited for. Naviance also lets students build a resume, manage deadlines for decision-making, and create and organize plans for the future. Students are able to monitor their progress with college applications and see what they still need to do. “They can see when teachers have sent their letters of rec[ommendation] to schools, they can see when the transcripts have been submitted, [and] when I’ve done my part, too,” said Nicolette Karl, counselor. 

Counselors are able to share information with students about upcoming college visits, local scholarship opportunities and other resources for college and career information. “It’s a great way to organize all your applications and help serve as a communication vehicle between the student and counselor so we know where you’re at to help support you,” said Karl.

Until this school year, St. Charles North used Career Cruising, a website that helped students research colleges and careers. Students were not able to contact their counselors through Career Cruising or compare their data with other students from St. Charles North. 

“The biggest reason is that Naviance offers a lot more than career cruising. Career Cruising is very good at what it does with the career piece. But what Naviance offers us is so much more in terms of the college application piece and the tracking piece and some of the other intangibles and the data that we can collect as a school, too, in terms of how many students have applied to colleges and where are they at with things,” said John Peters, Assistant Principal, College and Career Readiness.

Naviance will help in making college applications more efficient. Students are able to request transcripts, track the progress of their application and communicate with their counselor on one platform. 

“Our counselors will have an easier time sending our transcripts and colleges will have an easier time obtaining our test scores and records which can just help us a lot more than they could if we just used Common App or Career Cruising,” said Grace Forester, senior.

While it may be difficult to navigate at first, Naviance will be a helpful tool for college and career readiness. “We all have a set of skills, we all have interests and values, and so Naviance is a powerful career tool that allows kids to match up careers with what they’re looking to do one day, with who they are,” said Kirby.