Our DCs attend a school that does not use Naviance. Wondering if not having access will at all be a hindrance in the application process. DCs are very different students, so lessons learned with one will not necessarily be replicable with the other.
We didn’t find Naviance all that helpful/accurate. You can get most of the information you need from the common data sets.
Our HS uses Naviance but I don’t remember using it for the application process. other than ordering transcripts, iirc.
Naviance is really more for convenience with a bunch of features for students that are helpful for reference I believe. I think the main features that actually contribute to the application process are the ability for the student to request letters of recommendation and for the school to use that to send to colleges. Otherwise, Naviance all the other features on Naviance are just for your information and not important as part of the admissions process. Most of the information on there you can easily look up and find elsewhere anyway. I would assume the HS would be able to send recommendations another way.
There is no hindrance in not having Naviance. My DS had it and it just added an additional step or two. Still the same effort we went through with my older DDs.
Naviance can be very helpful in giving a realistic view on the chances of getting into various schools based on comparisons with students from the same high school from past years. In my experience it was very accurate.
We liked Naviance’s search tools based upon stats and majors and we liked the scattergrams of applicant results for the high school and in general. So I would rate Naviance as highly helpful but not necessary in the college search.