What is it? Naviance Family Connection Junior Year Naviance Family Connection is a web-based program that allows you and your parents to organize and manage your college search process. It also allows for direct communication with your college counselor and the ability for you to follow the process as it happens, which will hopefully help you be a little less stressed about if and when information is submitted. To Access Naviance: Students: Log into your Gibbons Website Account Find the link to Naviance on the right just under the Powerschool link. Click on it. You should be automatically signed into your student Family Connection account. Parents: Website: http://connection.naviance.com/gibbons Parent Username: Parent Password: Once you are logged in, you can start to use this for your college search to create a prospective school list and see how you compare to other Gibbons graduates (new statistics will be available each year in June). Researching Colleges From the Home Page, click on the College Tab at the top
2 In the middle you will find the College Research section, which provides you with many opportunities to explore colleges Here are some of the basic ways to access this information using these tabs: College Lookup If you know the name of a school you are researching, you can select college lookup College lookup lets you find a school in Naviance by name. When you click on college lookup, you can find a school by name, look up all schools in a state or in a country: SuperMatch College Search
3 If you want to search for schools based on specific criteria (i.e. size, location, major, etc.), you can select SuperMatch college search or college search. SuperMatch College search lets you enter a variety of criteria and gives you a list of schools that are an exact or close match for the criteria you entered: Click on arrow for each category options. Then make your selections to have list adjust.
4 College Search College Search is a less complex search tool than SuperMatch. It allows you to see all the criteria and enter it in order, selecting search matches anytime to see which schools fit your criteria: This is the list of various sections from which you can choose specific criteria. Each one of these has its own page. Select criteria that you feel is the best fit for you. Select next at the bottom of the page to go to the next criteria page, or select show matches to see a list of schools that match your entered criteria.
5 When you select show matches, you will be able to sort your college matches by specific criteria: Once a list is generated, based on your criteria, you can pick your choices to be added to a list of your colleges. You can also sort by using the drop down boxes at the top based on three different criteria. This is the same list sorted by enrollment size and then by average ACT total (composite) score
6 Other Search Tools There are several other tools in the College Research section that you may find helpful as you research schools: College Match After you have added schools to your list of colleges (see instructions below on Creating a colleges I m thinking about list), you can use the college match option. College match will analyze your information in Naviance and the schools that you are thinking about applying to and will generate a list of other schools that students tend to apply to that may be like those schools. College Resources
7 College resources gives you access to links with more information about schools and programs. This includes links to ROTC websites, College Board college search, Peterson s guide to colleges, financial aid websites and NCAA information and more. Use these to augment your search in Naviance. College Maps College maps gives you access to ranking and other lists that help you identify schools of interest such as the 100 Hidden Gems, 440 Great Colleges (Peterson s), 40 Colleges that Change Lives, U.S. Catholic Schools, etc. When you click on these lists, you see the location of all schools in the list on a map.
8 College Details on Naviance Please Note: Naviance information is ONLY a guide. For the most up-to-date information on application deadlines, requirements, etc. you must refer to the college s actual website. At any time during your search, you can click on a college s name for additional information about that school in Naviance. From the SuperMatch Page, click on School Info to access this information ------------------------------------------------------- From most pages, you can just click the name of the school in blue. -------------------------------------------------------
9 From Maps, click on the name of the school, and then click learn more from the box that appears in the map. College Information Pages When you click on any college name, as outlined above, you will have access to a plethora of general information about a school. The information provided will help you better determine if each school is a good fit for you. Please note: ALWAYS check the college s website for the most up-to-date information. Naviance is not updated daily. If you clicked on Emory University from any search page, you will get a general page about Emory:
10 In addition to any pictures and videos available for a school, all college information pages provide the ability to click on each of the gray-colored headings found below the address for each school. 1) General Information: supplies you with basic location, size, religious affiliation, and application deadlines 2) Admissions: provides information about application requirements, total applications and percentage of all who applied who were accepted, and an overall idea of average SAT/ACT and GPA of applicants admitted. 3) Financial Aid: provides information on tuition costs, availability of financial aid, etc. 4) Majors and Degrees: lists all degrees offered at the college.
11 You can click on any major to see a list of other schools that offer that major too! 5) Student Life: provides list of organizations and Greek life offered at the school. If after looking at this information, you continue to be interested in this school, you can learn more by visiting the school s website. Just click the visit website button above these informational tabs. Creating a colleges I m thinking about list When you have determined that a school is among your possible schools based on the research you have done, you can add the school to your colleges I m thinking about list. From any college information page, you can click add to colleges I m thinking about :
12 The school will then be added to your colleges I m thinking about list like this: To view this list: From most any page on Naviance, you can click here on the left-hand column. From the home page, click the colleges tab. It is located until the my colleges section.
13 Navigating your colleges I m thinking about list If you know the name of a school you want to add, you can click here to add quickly If you want to email the school, click here. See the scattergram explanation in Am I Competitive? section for more information about the Graph. Delivery Type: Tells you if the school takes electronic documents Current deadlines, these are updated yearly. Always check each college s website for final deadlines. (just a computer will show), is a Common Application school (computer with a CA in it ), or takes documents by mail (shown by a postage stamp ). You can rank your interest in each school by using this drop down menu. This is useful after you have visited a school. Visit the school s website by clicking here.
14 How Competitive Are You? Naviance provides a number of ways to see how competitive you are for a school based on the statistics from past Cardinal Gibbons graduates. This information will allow you to determine if a school is more of a target school, a safe school, or a reach school for you. College Compare College Compare allows you to select up to 10 schools to compare with each other and with your own GPA and estimated or actual standardized test scores. Select college picker to be able to enter schools you want to compare. By selecting several schools, you can view a list that shows how competitive you are based on data from Gibbons students (and since colleges will compare you to others from our school, this is an excellent way
15 to see how you may fare in the admissions process.) If a school does not have data from Gibbons students, it will state insufficient data. Note: School stats in red shows that your current stats are lower than the average of those students accepted in the past year; those in green show that you are higher than the average of those students. A grid just like this comparing you and one specific school may appear at the top of any school specific information page. The information is coded the same. Scattergrams Scattergrams provide a visiual graph with data from last year s Gibbons graduates to show you who was accepted, denied and waitlisted at various colleges. You are also represented on the graph to help you get an idea of where you currently stand. To view a scattergram select a school from the drop dowm menu (all schools to which Gibbons students have applied in the last several years are listed, however, graphs will only display data from the previous school year.)
Then select the test you want to look at (we recommend the SAT 1600 scale or the ACT, depending on which test you took and did better on): 16
17 Select Display Graph to see the scattergram for that school: You are represented, based on the current stats we have on file, on the graph by a red circle. Remember this is based on Gibbons students who graduated last year! This graph and the data in the college compare section may seem different than stats published on a college s website. Colleges tend to compare students with students from their same school, so this is a more accurate guide to your competitiveness for a school. If there is no data about a school provided because no Gibbons students applied last year, then you need to look for the average GPA and SAT/ACT scores as well as other admission requirements on that college s website to help determine if the school is a good fit for you or not.
Other Naviance Tools 18 Enrichment Programs Summer programs and other enrichment opportunities that may be of interest to students to explore a career or take some higher level courses can be found here. Scholarship Search Some resources for financing college can be found in this section. Try also websites such as www.schoolsoup.com, www.collegebaord.com, and www.fastweb.com. Or Google College Scholarships. Be sure to check each college s website for school specific scholarships as well.
19 Career Inventories and Searches Take some surveys to help you learn about careers that are a good fit for you. Research lots of careers and find out what schools have majors of interest to you. Build a Resume
Besides having easy access to your lists and saved work, the about me tab also has a resume builder. You will have to create a resume to turn into your counselor and teachers for recommendations and may want to submit one to a college or coach. Use this builder to keep track of things you have done and add things as you do them, so you won t be rushed creating it next fall. Start Now! 20 If you have any questions about this process, feel free to stop by and see your counselor or you can select Home from the upper tabs (far left) and then select contact us on the main page to send your counselor a note. You can also email your counselor from your home email. Any of that will work! You will use all this information next year when you will be moving colleges into your colleges I m applying to list. You will receive instructions on this at the start of senior year. Happy College Hunting!