College Center upgrades to Naviance
Samo’s College Center has adopted a new approach to college applications through Naviance, a system that allows students to complete much of their college paperwork online and replaces the need for physical transcripts.According to college counselor Julie Honda, the upgrade to Naviance will simplify the admissions process for students and provides them with useful features that will help students make more informed decisions about college.“Everything in Naviance is for the student and to aid the student,” Honda said. “Students can search for scholarships, search for colleges, upload their letters of recommendation and see how Samo students have done 'admissions-wise' at a specific college.”According to Honda, Samo made the switch to Naviance due to parent and student interest and to reduce to difficulties of completing college applications.“The College Center talked about upgrading to Naviance at the end of last year, and it was proposed to families during registration,” Honda said. “We went with it in the beginning of the year, about two weeks before school started.”According to I-House Principal Renée Semik, upgrading to Naviance will make the college admissions process less strenuous for both students and college counselors.“The college counselors, their assistant and Ms. Baxter would have to spend hours getting students’ envelopes, printing transcripts, stuffing envelopes, making sure they were all addressed correctly and then sending them off to the post office,” Semik said. “Now all of this is done by pushing a few buttons.”Senior Isaac Nemzer agrees that the upgrade to Naviance will make applying to colleges much simpler and less time-consuming, because not nearly as much paperwork is required as in the past.“The college process is hectic – I hope that Naviance will help deal with at least a little of the stress involved,” Nemzer said. “I also can’t help but be grateful that I don’t have to fill out so many envelopes.”According to Honda, the switch to Naviance also saves a significant amount of paper.“The system is helping us go green because we are able to send transcripts, profiles and letters of recommendation all through the Internet,” Honda said. “That means we don’t have to kill 500 trees anymore when we send off the information to colleges.”According to college counselor Frank Gatell, Naviance also eliminates the sometimes unreliable United States Postal Service.“I think one of the biggest plusses is that with online transcripts we’re taking out the postal service,” Gatell said. “Transcripts always got lost in the mail; when we send off most of them usually about 1700 [transcripts] don’t arrive at their destination.”However, Gatell said that there is the possibility that glitches in the system could cause transcripts not to be delivered or lost.“There’s always the chance of technical glitches – that’s just fact,” Gatell said. “I would be naïve to say it is going to be perfect.”Gatell said that if a glitch were to happen, it would not cause too many problems.“Even if some transcripts didn’t get delivered because of a glitch, we would be able to resend them immediately,” Gatell said. “For instance, if there was a power outage that occurred while we were sending transcripts, we could just wait for power and resend them. And now we don’t have to wait for transcripts to be delivered by mail and processed to find out if something went wrong – it’s all automatic.”Ultimately, according to Semik, Naviance has brought Samo up to the level of other high schools technology-wise and will make the process of applying to colleges less difficult.“Malibu has been using this system for a few years and it has really made the process as easy as it can be,” Semik said. “I am excited and proud to be leading the College Center at this time as we transition into the 21st century and into a whole new way of doing business.”jpitsker@thesamohi.com