The 2025-26 school year marked the introduction of D303’s new college and career readiness platform, SchooLinks. Formerly using Naviance for college and career readiness purposes, the district switched to this new program because it better aligns with all Illinois public schools’ Postsecondary and Career Expectations framework, better known as PaCE.
“We have what’s called the PaCE framework. It’s a framework that will go [grades] 6-12, just all about post secondary options, making sure kids know what their choices are make the best, informed decisions,” said Cara Erdmier, North guidance counselor. “This platform helps us more closely align with what the district schools are for our students.”
Many North seniors are just finishing the first round of their early action college applications. SchooLinks is a critical resource for that process.
“I appreciate the tools that SchooLinks has, like the college search and the application checklist,” said senior Emily Tidler. “It wasn’t that bad of a transition [to SchooLinks] because we didn’t use Naviance much before senior year.”
Through SchooLinks, students can browse career choices, research colleges and universities and search for scholarships, among other features. While Naviance offered similar resources, the new platform comes with more advantages.
“SchooLinks is a lot more user friendly, just the interface itself. [It is] way better than what we were used to,” said Erdmier. “[It has] better data tracking tools, so college applications, FAFSA for seniors, just better college searching in general, everything from general admission stats to the average temperature on campus per month. So just a lot more in depth for our students.”
SchooLinks is also where counselors load transcripts and where recommenders insert their letters of recommendation. The Common Application, which is the platform most students use to apply to college, connects directly with SchooLinks to receive those transcripts and letters of recommendation.
“From a teacher’s perspective, [using SchooLinks] was pretty flawless. I know I had other people in my department that were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I haven’t done it on here. How do you do it?’ but it’s super simple to walk right through,” said Jenny McCall, North science teacher.
To acclimate to the new program, North counselors were trained over the summer.
“Counselors were trained twice over the summer before we even had kids back in the building. [That] made it super easy to go through literally everything on SchooLinks. Some folks from that platform came in and taught us everything there was to know about it, and so it made it really easy,” said Erdmier. “They also have an AI chat bot on SchooLinks, which they didn’t have on Naviance. So any questions that just pop up, if we’ve got students in our office, they’re very quick to respond.”
While Erdmier reports that students have had a relatively seamless switch so far, she stresses that counselors are a good resource for one-on-one help regarding the platform and college and career readiness questions in general.
“Obviously, with any new platform, there’s going to be a learning curve, and it’s especially difficult when you’ve got seniors who are going through college apps for the very first time anyways, and now the added pressure of this new system,” said Erdmier. “But counselors meet individually with all seniors, and so [in] those individual conversations we can really get into, ‘Where do you need help? Where’s SchooLinks confusing to you? What can we do to help you along?’”
