WHS Transitions from Naviance to Scoir

While seniors went through the college process this year, another decision Walpole High School guidance department dealt with was the use of Scoir or Naviance. While Naviance has served as a well-known website to help with the college search over the past two decades, Scoir is a newer website that Mrs. Wilson has tested with her seniors this year and has received an exceptional outcome.

Since it was created in 2002, Naviance has been the go-to website when applying to colleges. With scattergrams using grade point average and test scores to compare your own statistics to other WHS students that have applied to the school, as well as different categories to sort schools in and a brief page about each college giving more information, Naviance looks like the perfect website for students to use during the college process. However, Scoir has scattergrams, categories to sort colleges, information about each school and more. 

“I used Scoir for the first time this year and I thought it was much easier to navigate and I could download the app on my phone so I had easy access,” senior Lynsey Tashjian said.

Scoir has a mobile app that students can download to look at colleges on their phone. It also has a separate app for parents and guidance counselors, which makes the college process easier for them as well. Students nowadays are more likely to using an app on their phone rather than logging onto a website on their computer, making Scoir much more accessible than Naviance.

Scoir is much more user friendly,” guidance counselor Allison Wilson said. “Whereas with Naviance we were always making screencasts to teach students how to do things—even things that should have been simple such as looking for scholarships—most students are able to find the features on Scoir that they need without much help.”

Scoir also allows signing in using Google, a simple attribute that often falls under the radar. During the college process, there are so many different passwords students need to remember for each school they apply to. Having an easy way to log in to the website makes it all the more accessible.

On the main screen of your list of colleges, Scoir shows each of the schools you are applying to, in order of when each application is due. Also, after you apply, it tells you how many documents your counselor has sent in, which ensures the student applying that all of their application material went through and they are not missing anything.

“I think Scoir is much better organized,” senior Katie Soule said. “I liked that you could move colleges into different categories, like ‘following,’ ‘applying’ and ‘applied.’ I also liked that you could get suggestions from your conselor and the fact that there is a clear list of deadlines for all your schools.”

With the addition of Scoir, teachers found it much easier to upload recommendation letters, as well as counselors uploading application materials as well. This new website is bound to make the college process easier for seniors and everyone else involved, which is why the guidance department has decided to cancel their contract with Naviance altogether and only use Scoir next year.