<p>Our small private college prep school doesn’t have it. We’ve done just fine doing extensive “big-book” research, along with college websites, and, of course, armed with my D’s stats.</p>
<p>Our Texas public added it the year after S graduated.</p>
<p>Our school really pushes it on families starting in 8th grade. Parents and students all get their own accounts.</p>
<p>We got access in Feb of jr. year.</p>
<p>fall of Sophomore year with a tutorial on how to keep the resume etc. I think they see it as a good motivator-- and it is.</p>
<p>Whenever the parents ask for it.</p>
<p>If they don’t pester the information out of guidance by the end of 11th grade, it gets sent home with the kid.</p>
<p>However, it proved completely useless for Happykid because her major (Theater Tech/Lighting), while not unbelievably rare, has shown to be all but unsearchable in any of the internet search engines. Fortunately, she has good contacts in that professional field and there are generous parents here at CC who have given us more ideas. If you have a kid in the arts, stop fretting about Naviance and go talk to the teacher/department advisor/instructor/professional in the field. Or pop over to the College Majors Forum and ask there.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best as you start this process!</p>
<p>In my school, the kids who get into NHS in junior year (about 30 of us, out of a class of ~600) get Naviance halfway through the year because we get an additional guidance counselor (head of the department). Everyone else gets them a couple months later because thats when the guidance counselors start their accounts.</p>
<p>We got access at the beginning of Freshman year. No one really ever uses it, though</p>
<p>Youngest son got it in spring of 8th grade, when he was registering for freshman classes.</p>
<p>Our old school used it as the primary communication tool from the counselors so it started freshman year - it included the exercises they did in each grade - personality test, career assessment, etc.
Parents were sent a code to register as well though it was not required. It was very useful in a private school setting where kids apply all over the world.
Haven’t heard anything about it at our public school in Michigan - don’t think they have it but so few kids even go out of state for college.</p>
<p>We were given the code, along with a booklet explaining the various “screens,” during the freshman parents’ meeting that fall. I noodled around a bit to see what it was like, but it wasn’t useful until we had the sophomore year PSAT scores to estimate.</p>