A college and career program has helped juniors and seniors plan their futures this year and will soon be introduced to freshman and sophomores.

The Naviance Program is a computer based planning tool that helps students get a head start on their future. Naviance helps each student find the right college and career path through multiple tests and surveys. It also goes through the whole application process with each student. Naviance is only available to juniors and seniors for now. The school may introduce Naviance to sophomores this spring.

“[Naviance] has been around for a long time…it was just a matter of us getting there,” Carl Krause, College and Career counselor, said.

Other schools, such as Stevenson High School and Buffalo Grove High School, have used Naviance for at least four years. LZHS introduced the program at the beginning of this school year.

Matt Liberatore, student counselor, used this same program at his previous school. Liberatore described Naviance as an “incremental process” that takes a while to add every student into the program.

Liberatore described his opinion of the program at his old school where there was a 99% placement.

“[Naviance] was great. The best part about it was being able to track and know where students are applying to,” Liberatore said.

Juniors have been using Naviance more because the seniors are new to the program and have most of their future plans already in mind, Krause said.

Naviance aids each student with the whole application process and can easily updates students about schools they’re planning on applying to, or where they have already applied. LZHS is working towards developing the program so that the school can use electronic transcripts and send teacher recommendations, applications, and resumes.

The counselors work with each student step by step. Students can log on from home, and all juniors and seniors have accounts. To register, each student meets their counselor to activate their account.  All college information and personality tests are saved under their files once submitted.

“[Naviance is nice] because it grows with the students,” Krause said, describing how students can look back on their tests from the past.

The Naviance main webpage has five tabs: Courses, Colleges, Careers, About Me, and My Planner.

 Under the College file, students can access information on schools across the country and look at scatter grams of ACT scores and GPAs of graduated LZHS students that were accepted or denied.

“It’s like a big funnel,” Krause said of the organization process for colleges. By submitting each student’s interests, test scores, GPAs and information, students can work with counselors to narrow down what colleges would be realistic for them.

 Students can take personality tests through the Career file to help assess what careers would best fit them and learn about different careers and how to pursue them. Most questions

Meghan Joynt, junior, has been able to narrow her career options down to a few using the Naviance program.

“[The best part about Naviance] is it narrows down what courses you want to take and helps you decide what career,” Joynt said. 

The process of planning your future can be “really stressful, but Naviance helps a lot,”