Scoir to Improve College Selection Process
Ethan Zabar
STAFF WRITER
Last year, Andover High School switched its college readiness program from Naviance to Scoir, an overall welcome change. The change to Scoir gave students an efficient and convenient medium for their college search.
Jayne Jones, an AHS guidance counselor who has helped hundreds of students throughout their college selection processes, stated that the overall response to Scoir has been friendly thus far. “The site is super user-friendly and allows students to research and link to colleges… and review the scattergrams as compared to other AHS graduates,” she said. The access to graphs that help visualize where one stands in relation to the expectations of a college makes finding attainable reach schools much easier, according to Jones.
“Scoir is also more contemporary and visually more pleasing,” Jones continued. “Students can also follow colleges’ links to Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube, something that Naviance did not offer. Parents and caregivers also use SCOIR, and most of the parents and caregivers have found SCOIR to be helpful during the college process.” This was a much-needed change from Naviance, according to Jones.
Scoir has not improved efficiency in the college process for students alone, according to Jones. “SCOIR has also been easier for our teachers,” she said. “With Naviance, teachers were required to submit their letters of recommendation for their students. If a student added a college to their list, the student had to notify the teacher so that the teacher could send their letter. On SCOIR, it is the guidance counselors’ job to send the teacher recommendations in addition to other credentials. As much as this is another step for guidance, it makes more sense and streamlines the process.”
Since the switch to Scoir took place last year, AHS senior Georgia Allen has already gone through her search for colleges. She described her experience with Scoir as very positive overall. “It was very easy to figure out how to use Scoir and it became easier to find out more information on specific colleges,” Allen said. “Before using Scoir, some worries that I had about finding colleges were that I would not be able to figure out the specific necessary information about each college, but Scoir actually made it way easier to organize my list and to figure out what I wanted from a college.”
The time to begin college applications will begin soon for AHS juniors, the class of 2023, and many students have voiced both excitement and trepidation about their upcoming pressure-filled senior year. AHS junior Amanda Lichtenberg expressed her anticipation about using Scoir to apply to colleges. “I feel nervous because I have no clue what school I want to go to and don’t know what I want to study,” she said, “I know I want to go to a kind of big school, so hopefully, I’ll have some sort of way to filter down my options so I can see what is available to me.” According to both Jones and Allen, Scoir may provide the perfect outlet for students like Lichtenberg to make their journey through college applications a little more comfortable.
