A GUIDE TO "FAMILY CONNECTION"
Naviance's "Family Connection" is a web based program for academic planning, college and career research. You will want to become familiar with this program as it is the primary vehicle you will use to:
plan your high school academic program
research careers
research college majors
determine what colleges to apply to
apply for scholarships
request letters of recommendation
order transcripts
Naviance's Family Connection program has changed to a new, user-friendly format that groups categories more intuitively, and eases navigation between the sections. We encourage you to explore and familiarize yourself with all the resources in the program. We have summarized the key features for you below.
- On the “Family Connection home page, enter the same login credentials that you use to access "Q".
- If students have not recieved a Naviance Registration code or have lost it, it can be re-issued by our College & Career Center. For questions contact: Mrs. Jean Hawkins in the College & Career Center at: 818-735-3315 or via email at:jhawkins@oakparkusd.org
General Announcements will appear in this section with important information - you should check it often!
This section will alert you to campus visits by college representatives, and other college/career related presentations.
This will also be where you are notified that there are e-mail messages waiting for you from your Counselors, the School, or the College & Career Center.
pages
On the left-hand side of the home page you will see a list of topics under the pages heading that contains a year-by-year timeline designed to help parents and students pay attention to the critical activities that lead to students being ready for the college applicaion process that begins in the fall semester of their senior year. The pages are - the 4 year plan for high school as well as instructions on what activities students should be taking care of in the freshman year, sophomore year, junior year, and senior year, along with a page about recommendations as well.
links
updates
On the right-hand side of the home page, there is an updates column where the school will post local paid & volunteer job opportunities.
This section also contains a document library where students will find Word versions of the applications for scholarships as well as Counseling Forms that students will need to complete if they plan to ask OPHS Teachers and/or Counselors to write college recommendations for them.
Under this tab students can view a comprehensive listing (with Course Descriptions) of all our courses. You can also create and update a personal 4-year plan for your high school career!
Under this tab students can research colleges, select specific schools to apply to, and research scholarships!
colleges I'm thinking about is the section where you save colleges initially while you research them before deciding to apply, or not.
colleges I'm applying to is the section you move the colleges to that you've actually decided to apply to. Once you have moved schools to this category section Naviance will help you track the status of all the application milestones for each college.
- under this bar you will find a range of state-of-the-art research tools to help students find the right schools for them.
- SuperMatch™ college search lets you search for your best college match based on 23 criteria. Click on a search option, such as "Tuition and Fees," to enter your preferences. For a more accurate match, tell us how important the criteria are to your search-kinda, very, or must have-by clicking the radio buttons. Results update in real time as you enter your preferences, showing a percentage match for each school. You don't have to fill in every search option, but the more you tell us, the more accurate your results may be. To learn more about a school, click its name. The expanded view will explain the percentage score and also provide ways to connect with the school.
college search is the link where students can perform an advanced search for colleges using criteria that matter most to them. Select factors in any or all of the categories to help narrow down a list of colleges that match your interests. At the end of each page, you can either click Show Matches to generate a list OR click Next to continue to pick more factors. You will notice that the number of schools that matches your criteria constantly appears near the top of the page as you move through the selections. If you end up with too many schools on your list and you need to narrow your list, simply select more factors. You should use the Previous button at the bottom of the page if you want to go back to earlier pages/factors. On the other hand, if you end up with too few schools, go back and deselect some of your factors. In order to save your list of colleges, you must manually save each one. To do this, click the pick link next to that school on your list of generated schools. That school will show up in the Hand-Picked List box. Once you’ve selected all of the schools from your college search that you want to save, click the Add to My Colleges button directly under the box labeled Hand-Picked List box.
college match - this tool will allow you to use historical gpa and test score information about students from OPHS and their college applications to match you with colleges that you may want to consider adding to your list. Please note that there are many factors which can affect admissions decisions and the results of this search do NOT guarantee in any way whether or not you will be accepted at a particular college. If a particular college never appears in the results, it may be because no one from Oak Park has ever applied to it.
college compare – this tool allows you to compare average grade point averages and test scores for accepted students from OPHS at up to ten colleges. School averages are displayed in green when your number is higher and in red when your number is lower. Your PSAT score, if available, has been converted to the equivalent SAT score and compared to the average single SAT score of an accepted student. The column labeled "Accept" shows the number of students accepted out of the number of students that applied.
college resources - this link has a comprehensive range of resources on the following topics: College and Careers, Financial Aid, Test Preparation, College Athletics, and the Military.
scattergrams – this amazing tool allows you to visually see how you compare to other OPHS students who have applied to these colleges based on your grade point average and ACT or SAT score.
- acceptance history & college maps – Check out these links to see how many OPHS students have applied, been admitted, and are now attending specific colleges and universites around the United States. FYI - Since last year was the first year for OPHS using Naviance, its data base only has historical GPA and test score information from the class of 2009. However, we do have comprehensive statistics going back to 2000 at the following hyperlink on our website: Senior Post Graduation Surveys
- enrichment programs - Students should look forward to the summer as an opportunity to pursue interesting, challenging summer courses, or internships, jobs, travel or other engaging activities. These are important components to a student’s resume and there is a huge array of options available to students. To help you find the right opportunity, check out the wide range of programs posted at this link. The most reputable and useful have been linked to this page.
- scholarships & money - in this section students will find a comprehensive scholarship data base that includes with applications and search engines at the following links: scholarship list, scholarship match, national scholarship search, scholarship applications.
- in this section students will complete the personality type assessment, and the career interest profiler.
- Once students have completed the two assessments they will be able to explore their favorite careers by cluster type.
This section includes surveys that will be required of all students during the senior year: - counselor's recommendation questionnaire
- parent questionnaire
- teacher’s recommendation questionnaire
- senior survey
- counselor's task list - This section includes a link to the task list that has been assigned to you by your Counselor, as well as an opportunity for you to set personal goals for yourself.
- This section pulls everything together that students have researched for the start of their Senior Year. This section will be their point of reference throughout the Senior Year to monitor the application process from beginning to end. It includes links to: - favorite colleges
- favorite careers and clusters
- personality type
- journal
- game plan
- resume
- Students can update their contact information & email address at the profile link
- Students can change their account login at the account link.
- Students can update their SAT, ACT, PSAT, and AP test scores at the test scores link.
- Students can download the Naviance Mobile App
“my planner” is a brand new section this year!
at a glance: allows to plan our your “to do” items in the following format
Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed |
TODAY | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Due dates for any to-do items you add will appear here, and so will any tasks assigned to you.
due today: You can create goals and to-do items to keep track of things you'd like to work on.
coming next: You can create goals and to-do items to keep track of things you'd like to work on.
To-dos are actions you need to complete. You can relate them to a goal you make or a task that your school has assigned to you. They can also be on their own, which is a good way to keep track of work you need to do or things coming up on your calendar.
In your success plan, goals can be anything! You can set a goal to make the honor roll or to become an astronaut or anything else you can think of. It's a good idea when you're making a goal to make it something you'll need to work toward. Then, use the "next steps" to break it down into smaller parts like "getting an A in math."
Tasks can be assigned to you by your school counselors and/or teachers. They are pretty important (many are required for the college application process and some can be required to graduate!), so make sure to go through them and make sure you're on track.
