Almost two decades ago, Greeley switched its college application management process from old fashioned printing and faxing to Naviance: a college and career platform that housed historical admissions data and allowed students to explore and interact with colleges. One of its most important functions was to facilitate the submission of many application documents such as letters of recommendation, transcripts, and midyear reports.
In early 2021, Naviance was acquired by a different student management system, PowerSchool. That fall, Greeley seniors began experiencing difficulties in their college application process on the platform. Counseling Department Chairperson Rebecca Mullen recalled that students faced tremendous submission errors: “You couldn’t trust Naviance anymore because there were too many times where [students said], ‘Wait, I didn’t even request that teacher — how come that teacher’s letter went to the college?’ or ‘The college never received my transcript but we’re looking at it and it’s saying it was submitted.’” In fact, the problem with Naviance wasn’t only occurring at Greeley: “This was [happening at] so many schools” said Ms. Mullen.
All the while, Naviance’s technical support lacked a substantial solution to the issue. Ms. Mullen said that last year “We would call and say, ‘this is happening — could you please fix it?’ and they’d kick it up to the next level and then the next level and months would go by and there would be no solution. They didn’t know what the problem was.” Ms. Mullen said these tech problems occurred with all types of documents, from letters of recommendation to ED agreements to transcripts. The bottom line was that “Naviance was causing our kids and our families an enormous amount of stress,” and it was necessary to find a new platform.
A research committee of Greeley teachers, administrators, and tech support was assembled to find a better platform. The committee consulted regional high school counselors along with college admissions officers to identify platforms that supported the most popular colleges for Greeley seniors. “We talked to some other schools who have worked with Scoir… we had a demonstration with the company, we had meetings with the Director of Technology… It was a long process.” said Ms. Mullen Finally, they settled on startup company Scoir (pronounced “score”) to replace Naviance.
Greeley administrators and counselors considered many advantages of Scoir over Naviance, including the ability to resubmit documents. In Naviance, once a transcript was submitted, it couldn’t be re-submitted. Thus, if the student dropped a course, or if there was a grade change, updates had to go through paper, which was not as reliable. According to Mrs. Stewart, one of Greeley’s assistant principals, “With [Scoir], you can resubmit a document…which is a huge advantage when you go back to the number of transcripts that we are sending daily.” Scoir also supports more schools than Naviance did.
Ms. Mullen emphasized the simplicity and intuition of Scoir’s user interface. For one, the college drag-and-drop feature on Scoir was not present in Naviance. Another advantage of Scoir is the automatic Common App syncing. “We would have tons of kids coming in to ask: ‘How do I match Naviance to the Common App?,’ ‘What if my email doesn’t match?,’ ‘How do I sign the FERPA here?’ With Scoir, all that’s gone now. So now we can get to the meat and potatoes of ‘Can you read my essay?’” Ms. Mullen said.
The interface is simpler for teachers as well. Naviance “made [sending] a recommendation much more tedious,” according to one of Greeley’s school counselors, Mr. Friedler. Now, “[teachers] just upload their letter, submit and they’re done.”
Although there are numerous benefits of Scoir, there are also some concerns about the new platform. One major flaw is that Scoir does not allow students to customize which colleges receive which letters of recommendation, always sending the two letters a student requests to every school. This becomes a problem since some colleges only accept one letter. Students then have to contact the college’s admissions office and request that a specific letter be read, if they have a preference. Mr. Friedler advised that students should ask their counselors to communicate with specific colleges that accept only one letter. It remains to be seen if more unexpected issues with Scoir will arise.
Many students have mixed feelings about Scoir. Senior Thomas M. said, “I liked Naviance better… In Naviance you could switch between ACT and SAT,” referring to the scattergrams depicting test scores of previous applicants. Similarly, senior Emily N. expressed that Scoir had its shortcomings: “Naviance had the compare yourself feature… [but] you can only compare four colleges at the same time [in Scoir].”
However, senior William C. brought up the point that the current seniors didn’t have much experience using Naviance apart from scattergrams and comparisons “before the transition.” Though current seniors may prefer Naviance’s comparison tools, in general, seniors are content with the actual college application process on Scoir: “I am satisfied with what’s available in Scoir to me,” says Chang. Senior Bertha S. agrees, “I think it’s a good way to keep all your college stuff organized.”
In the end, what really matters is that application documents are submitted properly. Since almost all Greeley seniors (over 90%, according to a presentation given at the April Board of Education meeting) will apply to some form of early admission every year, “having a reliable system to submit through is essential to our students’ and families’ wellbeing,” Ms Mullen said at the BoE presentation. Indeed, the Greeley administration had found that the schools that have already switched to Scoir consider it a much more dependable system than Naviance. Director of Technology and Innovation, Mr. Culwell-Block, said that while “Naviance only signs multi-year contracts… Scoir’s contract is a year-to-year contract, so after the year… if this isn’t working for us, we can move to something else.” The Greeley community remains optimistic: “So far, so good. It’s been fantastic,” Mr. Friedler says.