University of California Application, California State Application, Common Application, and Coalition Application. These are some of the many applications that Piedmont High School students have to juggle in order to apply to college. And yet, PHS chose to further complicate their students’ application process, by adding another platform into the mix this year: Naviance. 

Prior to the 2021-2022 school year, Naviance was an optional resource. Here, students had the capability to input their basic information, such as their official standardized test scores and GPA, and see how they compared to past PHS students who attended a respective school. However, this changed when the administration cemented Naviance into the application process, by making it the hub for teachers’ letters of recommendations.

Designed to streamline the application process, Naviance offered the opportunity for counselors and teachers to work through one platform. Instead of logging into countless application websites, teachers and counselors would simply login into Naviance and submit students’ transcripts and letters of recommendation. While in theory, creating a centralized hub for the college application process seemed helpful to both the administration and students, the outcome simply complicated the application process, and created frustration amongst students and teachers. 

Teachers, coming off a year in which they tackled distance and hybrid learning, were forced to take on an untimely new challenge in the form of Naviance. To make matters worse, teachers were forced to deal with the growing pains of this new platform without any training from the district. Whether it was being unable to see a student’s request for a letter, or being unable to submit a letter of recommendation, teachers, as expected on such short notice, struggled to grasp the functionality of the new platform. And with this struggle, grew frustration amongst the student body.  

 

For students, letters of recommendation are a piece of the college application that should take care of themselves. Besides, asking your teacher for a letter and giving them the resources they desire, the letter of recommendation is one of few opportunities for students to take their hands off the wheel during the college application process. Unfortunately, for this year’s seniors, this was not the case. Given a new platform, students were asked to take on unforeseen challenges in Naviance. Between struggling to link their Common Application to Naviance and being unable to request a letter of recommendation from their teachers, red error flags became a staple to students’ experience with Naviance. 

However, the confusion for students transcended simple error messages. Many colleges offer the ability for students to submit supplemental letters of recommendation (from coaches or other adults in your life) and letters of recommendation from past teachers at PHS. However, within the Naviance system, letter of recommendation requests can only be sent out to current teachers, and while this makes sense, PHS has experienced many retirements over the past year and its student body desires letters of recommendation from adults other than current teachers. This flaw in Naviance created chaos for students, as students were unable to find the “right” way to go about this problem because Naviance is a new system and no one was able to provide a clear answer.     

While the idea behind bringing Naviance to PHS was good, to streamline the college application process, the 2021-2022 school year was not the time to enact this change. Yet, since we have taken the bullet already, we should keep Naviance going forward, but the administration should provide students and teachers with ample time to become comfortable with the platform, and clear instructions of how to request letters and how supplemental letters of recommendation should be handled in the college application process.