What is Naviance and why do schools use it?

Naviance is a college and career readiness platform used by many high schools to manage the college application process. It allows counselors to send recommendations, students to track applications and deadlines, families to research colleges, and schools to connect students directly to the Common App. Most schools that use Naviance require students to complete certain tasks in the platform before transcripts and recommendations are sent to colleges, making it a critical tool for senior year applications.

What is the Naviance scattergram and how should families use it?

The scattergram shows where students from your specific high school have been admitted or denied at each college over the past several years, plotted by GPA and standardized test scores. It is one of the most useful features in Naviance because it shows real outcomes for students with similar academic profiles from your school, not national statistics. Families should use the scattergram to reality-check their college list rather than relying only on the school's published acceptance rate.

What should families do in Naviance in 9th and 10th grade?

In the first two years of high school, students should complete the personality and career interest assessments in Naviance, begin exploring college profiles in the database, and keep their academic history up to date. The goal is to become comfortable with the platform before senior year when it becomes operationally critical. Families who have never looked at Naviance until the fall of senior year are at a disadvantage when tasks need to be completed quickly.

How does Naviance connect to the Common App?

At schools that use Naviance, counselors typically send transcripts and letters of recommendation through Naviance rather than directly through the Common App. This means students must match their Naviance and Common App accounts before counselors can send supporting documents. Failing to complete this matching step is one of the most common reasons recommendations and transcripts are delayed, which can jeopardize applications with early deadlines.

What newsletter tool works best for explaining Naviance to parents?

Daystage is a great fit for Naviance tutorial newsletters because you can include screenshots of the platform, step-by-step numbered instructions, and links to video tutorials. Complex platform instructions that exist only as text are hard to follow. Daystage lets you pair written instructions with visual examples that significantly reduce the number of confused parent phone calls to the counseling office after the newsletter goes out.

Naviance Newsletter for Parents

Naviance is the college planning platform that many high schools use to manage the application process, and it is one of the most underused tools available to families. A newsletter that walks parents through what Naviance can do, and specifically what they need to complete within it at each stage of the college process, prevents the technology from becoming a barrier instead of a resource.

Explain Why Naviance Matters Before Anything Else

Many families do not take Naviance seriously until they realize in October of senior year that their student's transcript cannot be sent to colleges until specific tasks in Naviance are completed. Prevent this by explaining the stakes clearly in the newsletter: at schools that use Naviance, the platform is in the chain of custody for official documents. Missing steps in Naviance means missing application support from the counseling office.

A simple one-sentence explanation of the stakes in the newsletter opening gets families' attention before the tutorial begins.

Walk Through Account Setup First

The first Naviance task for freshmen and new students is account creation and profile setup. The newsletter should walk families through finding the school's unique Naviance link, creating login credentials, and completing the initial profile. Include a screenshot of what the login page looks like and a note about the most common setup errors: using a personal email rather than the school email, or skipping the profile completion step that makes assessments available.

Introduce the Scattergram Feature for Juniors

The scattergram is where Naviance earns its reputation as a genuinely useful college planning tool. Walk families through how to find and read the scattergram for any college in the database. The newsletter should explain that points above and to the right of a student's position on the chart represent students with stronger academic profiles who were still admitted or denied, and that the chart shows genuine distribution rather than averages.

A critical caveat for the newsletter: scattergrams reflect historical data from your school specifically, not national admission statistics. A school with a strong history of sending students to a specific college may have a more favorable scattergram than the national acceptance rate suggests.

Cover the Task Checklist for Seniors

Senior year in Naviance involves a specific set of required tasks that vary by school. Most schools require: building and finalizing the college list in Naviance, matching the Naviance account to the Common App, requesting letters of recommendation through the platform, completing the counselor questionnaire, and confirming each application has been properly submitted and assigned for transcript delivery. The newsletter should list these tasks in order with the recommended completion timeline.

Sample Newsletter Section

Naviance Step-by-Step: What to Do in Each Grade

Freshmen: Log in to Naviance (your school login is on the counseling page at schoolname.edu/naviance). Complete the Career Cluster Finder and Learning Style Inventory under the Careers tab. These take about 20 minutes each and give you a starting framework for thinking about college and career interests.

Sophomores: Complete the Strengths Explorer assessment. Begin exploring college profiles under the Colleges tab. Add 10-15 schools you are curious about to your Favorites list.

Juniors: Use the College Search to research schools seriously. For each school on your serious list, view the Scattergram and compare your GPA and test scores to historical outcomes from our school. Update your college list to include a realistic mix of reach, match, and safety schools.

Seniors: Complete all Naviance tasks before September 30. See the attached checklist. The most critical task: match your Naviance account to your Common App account by clicking the link under the Colleges tab before requesting any recommendations.

Explain the Common App Connection

The Naviance-to-Common App matching step is where families most frequently get stuck. The newsletter should describe this step in detail, including what students see when they navigate to the Common App matching page in Naviance, what information they need to have ready (their Common App email address), and what confirmation looks like when the match is successful. A step-by-step numbered list is more effective than a paragraph description for procedural instructions.

Include Contact Information for Platform Help

Every Naviance tutorial newsletter should include clear contact information for getting help: the name of the counselor or staff member who handles Naviance questions, their email, and whether they hold office hours. Platform problems at critical moments, like a recommendation not appearing or a scattergram returning no results, create significant anxiety. Knowing exactly who to call reduces that anxiety and prevents counselors from being blindsided by problems that could have been resolved with a simple email. Daystage makes it easy to format this contact information prominently so families do not have to dig for it when they need help.

Naviance Newsletter for Parents: How to Use the College Planning Tool