<p>Please post a link to this if it has already been discussed, (I've looked) but if not, can someone please explain the inner workings of Naviance to someone unfamiliar with it? I understand how to log in, look at data, navigate the website and so on. I am curious about how schools and colleges communicate through it. I know that is is connected to the common app, but I don't see how non CA schools do it, yet the GC at my students' schools assure me it does.</p>
<p>Before Naviance, one added the e mails of the GC and teachers to the app, they receive an e mail and then submit records/letters to the college. This part I get. Now there is a go between. The student still fills out the app, puts in the email addresses, and the college is also added to Naviance. I can see on Naviance that records and letters are uploaded and sent, but the connection between Naviance and the college remains a mystery to me. As to letters, I have been told that the teacher can send it through the email from the college, or through Naviance.</p>
<p>I see where Naviance is helpful in tracking data from the school and other college information. It looks like a nice central location for information. </p>
<p>How does a college download records from Naviance, particularly a non-CA one? Please educate an electronic record dummy but curious. Thanks</p>
<p>I guess I am in the dark… a student can’t get into records and letters on Naviance, but how does a college. If one can, why not all of them? How are the records kept secure? Before, they got sent to a college. Now they stay in Naviance.</p>
<p>The school still has to authorize release to the college, or they can’t access them (our guidance secretary was having issues yesterday, because someone changed her function within Naviance, and she could send transcripts, but couldn’t release recommendations. The teachers have to do that until someone changes her function back to one that allows her to release the letters.</p>
<p>The downside to this is that students are kept from controlling a process that should be all about them. If their school doesn’t want to release a transcript to a particular college, they just don’t do it. And students can’t just add a school to their list and send the information without informing the school. Schools can still act as gatekeepers.</p>
<p>I wonder why a school would not release a transcript? The student would have to go through the GC to get an official one and the GC report. I still think it just adds a “middle man” to the process. It’s nice to see the stats/scores of accepted students from a school when deciding to apply, but otherwise it seems complicated. Thanks</p>
<p>Since no one is jumping in, I guess I will reflect how I think it may work based on the common app. Our school started Naviance last year when my son applied to college but they turned off the features that the counselor rec and the teacher recs had to go through Naviance to avoid trouble. So we did nothing with Naviance. </p>
<p>When a student adds a school to their common app, the school gets an email from the common app that Johnny has added them so the school knows a student is interested in them and suddenly your student may start getting snail mail or emails that the school is so glad that Johnny wants to apply.</p>
<p>I imagine Naviance does something similar, so that all the common app and non common app schools know that Johnny has put them on their list. </p>
<p>The common app schools are easy. Naviance is just sending it over to be inside the common app. And while we always refer to the common app sending application info to the school I actually think the schools electronically contact the common app on some schedule and ask if there any application documents waiting for them and then they upload everybody’s documents that are intended for that school at once. My sense is that the common app simply is a big file folder.</p>
<p>So for non common app schools, once they are contacted by Naviance that they have a student that will be sending them files then the school must electronically set up some type of exchange with Naviance. So the non common app school electronically contacts Naviance (not each individual high school) and the students forms are uploaded by the non common app school. </p>
<p>This is just my guess but perhaps someone else knows more.</p>
<p>Thanks, that’s the missing piece. I did not think the colleges saw that a student was applying- I only thought they knew it when the application was submitted. The notification to non CA schools would prompt them to set up the connection.</p>
