Technology, culture, and trends are constantly changing.  The transition from hard copy transcripts to electronic transcripts is taking place across the country, as school districts send students’ transcripts with the ease of one click of the mouse.  Likewise, Bethel Park is going along with the change to transform the process of sending transcripts into a breeze.

The program responsible for revamping the process of sending transcripts into colleges is called Naviance.  Naviance is establishing an impact across the country, state of PA, and district of Bethel Park that is ultimately beneficial for everyone involved in the education process.  Not only does Naviance aid the lives of students, teachers, and counselors, but it also provides resources for students to explore colleges, majors, scholarship opportunities and future career prospects or interests.

Across the nation, whenever applying to colleges, a critical question pops into the minds of students and parents: how are we going to pay for college?

In the long run, college loans are not the solution as loans tend to pile up. Coupled with interest, loans present a heavy burden for a college grad.

On the other hand, students should be rewarded for their accolades and accomplishments that they have accumulated, whether that be in the classroom or outside of the classroom.  With that being said, a plethora of students always apply for scholarships and grants.  However, the paperwork often becomes tedious, as their hand begins to shake and cramp up after writing for hours on end.

Naviance offers a vast array of customization options that allow students to apply for scholarships online.

Bethel Park High School Guidance Facilitator, Mr. Bruce, states, “A perk of Naviance is that the site allows you to search through national scholarships, which is really neat.”

This is just one advantage of Naviance. Additionally, the ability for teachers to post college recommendations for students on Naviance is effective at saving time and money.  Before, teachers were forced to type the recommendation, print it, and then hand it to the student.  Thus, the guidance counselor had to retrieve the recommendation and then the whole situation progressed into a paperwork nightmare.

Naviance effectively meshes together academic and personal navigational tools that will help you find that perfect college.  This aspect of Naviance allows the student to explore various colleges by narrowing their colleges down through major, area, size, gender, diversity, price, much more.

The focal point of Naviance is how that it provides a hub for all parties involved (students, teachers, counselors, administrators, colleges, etc.).  This aspect is incorporated by allowing other users to instantly upload content such as surveys for other school districts to use; this element of the site makes counselors’ lives easier.  Now, counselors don’t have to type and format their own survey.  By opening and downloading another school district’s file, they can tweak and adjust the file to meet their own needs, which is extremely advantageous.

Mr. Bruce also uploads his own surveys which include: career and interests, extracurricular, and personal activities.  This sets everyone up for success.

Naviance terminates the paperwork nightmare that was once coupled with applying for colleges.   The current Senior class, the last class to apply via paper transcripts (unless your college demands them), can attest that the paperwork nightmare was an everlasting spire.

The current Juniors can be viewed as guinea pigs, as they are the first class to undergo the Naviance process.

In addition to Naviance acting as a hub, the website allows the audience to view “My Colleges” and see which college allows electronic transcripts by the icon.  However, some colleges only accept written transcripts.  This tool also allows the viewer to see which schools participate in The Common Application or Common App as it is more commonly called.

Moreover, the Common App website states that “Now in our fourth decade, the Common Application currently provides both online and print versions of its First-year and Transfer Applications. Our membership of more than 400 institutions now represents the full range of higher education institutions in the US: public and private, large and small, highly selective and modestly selective, and East Coast, West Coast, and every region in between. We have also welcomed our first two international members.”

Mr. Bruce highlights that a really cool part of this website is the logistics behind it, which includes the fusion of various statistics; Naviance Scattergrams are graphs with SAT scores on the horizontal axis and GPA on the vertical axis.  A separate graph is made for each college to which students from a high school have applied within the last few years.  A mark is made on the graph for each application, without giving away identification, that shows their GPA, SAT score, and the outcome of the application (e.g. accepted, rejected, waitlisted).  The whole idea that Naviance is trying to exemplify is that the student can get some idea of the range of GPA and SAT score values that a college is likely to accept.

Mr. Bruce also highlights that if Upper Saint Clair releases their Scattergram information, then he and other guidance counselors at Bethel Park can potentially see where Bethel Park and Upper St. Clair students land on the Scattergram. However, at this time, he’s not sure if the data will be labeled as belonging to a specific school.

If so, this is propitious, as Bethel Park teachers and students will be able to rectify issues they may have and stay in competition with our nearest neighbor.  One may say that this will improve the learning curve.

Nonetheless, Mr. Bruce keeps parents and students in the loop by sending out “e-mail blasts” every so often.  This allows students to stay on track and set themselves on a time frame, so they can sign up for SATs, SAT Subject Tests, ACTs, AP Exams, and most of all applying for colleges or trade schools.  In the last couple of months, Mr. Bruce has been visiting English classes.

You can access Naviance by accessing bpsd.org, clicking on Schools and “Bethel Park High School,” navigating yourself towards “Counseling,” and scrolling down toward “Quick Links,” which contains the link to Naviance.

Below is a link to Naviance:

https://connection.naviance.com/family-connection/auth/login/?hsid=bethelphs