Application Process
How To Videos
Key steps in the College Application Process (Watch this first!)
How to Match your Common App and Naviance Accounts
How to use the Supermatch feature on Naviance
How to use the Scattergram feature on Naviance
How to Request a Letter of Recommendation on Naviance
How to Add a College and Request a Transcript on Naviance
Video: Essay Writing Tips Part 2
Video: Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Essay
Letter of Recommendation
Letter of Recommendation Form PDF
Letter of Recommendation Form Word (Download or open with Google Doc edit)
Which schools require Letters of Recommendation?
Helpful Links
Four Steps to College Checklist-Illinois Student Assistance Commission Resource
College Application & Scholarship Organization Tool-Use this tool to help stay organized. Download the excel spreadsheet and save it on your personal device.
Fair Test-Updated list of schools that are Test Optional.
College Search
Naviance- A comprehensive college and career readiness program that aligns student strengths and interests to post secondary goals. This is our primary tool for the college application process. A selection of Naviance features are listed below:
My Game Plan helps focus your college search by asking a series of questions that you may not have yet considered about college. Knowing more about yourself will help you find schools that fit. This insight can further assist your counselor in helping you develop a game plan to achieve your goals.
College Search enables you to create a target list of schools in terms of size, location, major, etc. from a pool of more than 3,600 schools. (This feature is active only for student accounts.)
My Colleges provides you (and your counselor) with an electronic list of colleges that you are interested in. This component of the program compares your academic data to STCE graduates who were accepted to the schools on your list.
Scattergrams will help you learn from the past. Admission decisions (accept/deny/defer) from college-bound STCE graduates have been loaded into Naviance. These decisions have been plotted on graphs (2 axes--GPA and SAT/ACT), so you can assess your admissions chances at hundreds of STCE collegiate destinations.
My Resume is a place to keep a tally of your activities. This feature will help you to complete the activities portion of some college applications in addition to serving to keep your counselor apprised of your accomplishments.
College Scorecard-The College Scorecard was developed by the U.S. Department of Education to serve as an interactive college search tool. The Scorecard provides accessible national data on college costs, graduation rates, typical debt levels, and post-college earnings. It is available to help students make informed choices about attending college.
My Future- College search resource produced by the Department of Defense with data from the Departments of Commerce, Labor & Education.