Naviance
Naviance is a comprehensive set of online advising tools that help school counselors, students, and parents stay connected. Naviance can be used to explore career information, search for scholarship and summer enrichment opportunities, and research colleges. It also provides a way for counselors to communicate with students and parents about counseling-related events.
In mid-September, students and parents will be given registration codes via email so they can begin to use Naviance. It is important that families have updated their contact information in PowerSchool to ensure we send the Naviance registration information to the correct student and parent email addresses.
After you and your child receive your unique registration codes via email, visit https://student.naviance.com/mlwgs to get started. Click on “I need to register” and enter the code provided. You will then be prompted to create an account.
As students begin to use Naviance regularly, we will be able to message students based on their individual preferences via email. Parents are often included on grade level or interest group messages.
Naviance offers tools and assessments that can benefit students at every grade level. Students and parents are encouraged to begin exploring Naviance at any point they feel it will be helpful. We ask that by the spring of the 11th grade year, all juniors should be registered with Naviance and have set up prospective college lists to assist with the college counseling process.
Naviance Suggested Grade Level Activities:
9th Grade: Learning Styles Inventory For 9th graders who are eager to explore Naviance, the Learning Styles Inventory is a good place to start. This inventory helps students learn more about their learning preferences and recommended practices for study.
10th Grade: "Do What You Are" Personality Inventory
The “Do What You Are” Personality Inventory can help students learn more about themselves and potential careers that fit their interests. Career suggestions are not only matched with students’ personality types and preferred work conditions, but also with corresponding college majors and lists of colleges that have those majors. Students may refer back to their results at any time and add desired colleges that appear in the results to a personalized “Colleges that I am thinking about” list. Ultimately this prospective colleges list can be used to identify colleges for potential visits and admissions applications.
11th Grade: Career Interest Profiler and College Search
These tools should be used mid-way through junior year in conjunction with the College Kickoff program. Based on the Holland model for career assessment, the Career Interest Profiler is an additional tool that can help students identify the types of working environments and tasks that are appealing to them. Like the personality inventory, the results can also be linked to potential majors and colleges. The College Search function allows student to plug in their preferences and view a list of matching colleges. Students may choose to add some of these colleges to their prospective colleges list. Parents and counselors may view the results of the college search and also add colleges to this list as a way to suggest that the student look at those colleges too.
12th Grade: Brag Sheet, Parent Questionnaire and Scholarship Search Early in their senior year, students are asked to complete the “Brag Sheet” where they can compile their list of accomplishments. There is also a Parent Questionnaire that can help the senior counselors learn about students' growth and accomplishments from their parent's perspective. Together, these components give senior counselors a deeper understanding of students’ extra-curricular involvement, values and goals, and any extenuating circumstances that may be advantageous to mention in a letter of recommendation. The Brag Sheet is made available to students on Naviance as early as summer before senior year. Students will also be able to search for scholarships. While this is not an exhaustive list, it will give students an idea of what will be available in the coming months and allow them to access online scholarship applications at the touch of button.
Note: Students may begin using the scholarship search function (which includes a list of summer program opportunities) at any point in their high school career.