Phoenixville Students Navigate the College Selection Process with Naviance

Phoenixville Area High School seniors awaiting acceptance letters from the colleges and universities of their choice benefitted this year from a technology-based guidance tool that helps students, parents, teachers and guidance counselors navigate through the higher education planning process.

This year, the district integrated an interactive college counseling program called Naviance (sounds like navigate). The program uses an aggregation of data and career interest tests to develop a personal profile for each student, with the intent of focusing their interests toward long-term educational and career objectives. Naviance helps students create an overall plan for finding the right college, and does so in an organized fashion that reduces what can become a sea of confusing paperwork.

“I don’t know how you can survive and be a strong guidance department without this program” said PAHS guidance department chair Ginny Johnson. “The capabilities of this program work so well with the electronic college application filing process. It takes all the paperwork we usually deal with and raises the process to an electronic level.”

Naviance, accessed through the PAHS website, offers a one-stop option for students, parents and guidance counselors to manage the entire college application process electronically. Students can pull together applications, transcripts, SAT and/or ACT results, faculty recommendations and any other required support documentation, then transmit everything to the institutions online. The program tracks when the “paperwork” was delivered, even noting when the information was downloaded by the recipient. Students can even search a national database for scholarship and enrichment programs.

Students begin by taking a career survey that highlights their talents, personality traits and learning patterns. With those results, students—with help from their guidance counselors—can begin to research careers that would best suit their strengths, as well as find colleges and universities that offer majors in those areas. Users can access data from approximately 2,000 institutions of higher learning and see what the criteria are for admittance to those schools, as well as the cost to attend. Students can then save that data, referring to it as they continue to plan for their educational lives beyond Phoenixville.

“Based on information entered for that student, the program pulls from a nationally fed database and presents a list of colleges that student might be interested in,” Johnson said.

Naviance is not limited to students ready to apply for college. The program, designed with separate interfaces for students, family and guidance counselors, also allows users to create a timeline of events leading up to graduation. Elements of the program allow guidance counselors to inform underclassmen of deadlines for standardized testing, news of guest speakers that pertain to their areas of interest and announcements involving college visits. Next year, students will use Naviance to schedule their classes.

The program includes a resume builder for students as well, where they can keep track of accomplishments and extracurricular achievements.

Naviance is also a valuable tool for the school district, enabling administrators to track college enrollment figures as well as the overall success of graduating students.

Cost of the program was $7,500 for the high school and $6,000 for use in the middle school.

Although Johnson joined the high school’s guidance staff after Naviance was purchased, she is a veteran user. During her 10 years as a counselor/college liaison at Great Valley High School, she was always looking for a way to better organize the stacks of note cards and other paperwork for her students. One day, a postcard came in the mail, introducing Naviance, and she said “That’s it!”

“Naviance is the type of program I was always trying to invent on my own,” she said. “This electronic system significantly reduces the amount of paper involved in the process and creates a more organized method of helping students achieve their goals and attend the best college for their intended careers.”

Since then, Johnson has gained nationwide recognition as an expert in the program. She currently serves as president of the Pennsylvania Association of College Admissions Counseling and, in that capacity, she sees the benefits of using Naviance beyond Phoenixville.

Among other things, this puts her in a position to speak to colleges and universities throughout the state, encouraging them to join the Naviance network. With more colleges and universities involved in the program, the chances of finding the best matches for prospective students grow exponentially.