Huntington Expands Access to Family Connection Website
One year after its debut at Huntington High School, the Naviance Family Connection technology based counseling program is being expanded to an additional grade level.
The program is linked with Naviance Succeed, a service Huntington's college office uses to track college applications and data. The Family Connection website is comprehensive, providing students and parents with access to college searches, career exploration, scholarship and financial aid resources, as well as tools create a résumé and research summer enrichment experiences.
The school's goal is to have every junior and senior logging into the program and utilizing it for their post-high school research and planning. "Last year we launched the program with the current seniors (then juniors) to rave reviews," said Bernadette Walsh, Huntington's college counselor. "We recently hosted our eleventh grade student and parent night and opened up the website to those students, too."
Linda Catalano, the college office secretary, has been busy distributing Naviance Family Connection access codes to students throughout the day. "Students utilizing the program have the opportunity to explore colleges and predict their admissibility to a particular school based upon the admission history of Huntington High School graduates," Mrs. Walsh said.
Huntington students are able to compare their scores (GPA, SAT, ACT) to those of Huntington graduates and make realistic decisions regarding the college application process. "Over the past six years, I have been tracking the admission history (acceptances, denials, waitlists, early decision, early action, etc.) of our Huntington graduates as well as their standardized test score," Mrs. Walsh said. The alums need not worry about a breach of confidentiality since the information contains no personal information linked to an identity
The Family Connection website is user friendly and accessible via a unique alpha-numeric registration code. Students who have not picked up their code should stop in to see Mrs. Catalano.
Parents also have access to the Family Connection to conduct similar research and their individual access codes are being distributed along with the student codes. Parent accounts differ from student accounts.
Once a student or parent obtains an access code they can log onto Family Connection via www.connections.naviance.com/huntingtonhs or via the "Helpful Links" tab on the guidance department's page of the Huntington School District website at www.hufsd.edu. Students and parents need an active email address to log onto the Family Connection.
Students can explore the Family Connection and its unique features. If students have taken the ACT, SAT or subject tests, Mrs. Walsh has uploaded this information, so these students have a personalized Family Connection account. GPA's for all students have also been uploaded.
The Family Connection's "scattergrams" are perhaps the most sought after feature of the website. "These graphs provide admission history of our graduates and overlay the GPA and SAT/ACT scores for current students," Mrs. Walsh said.
A document library has also been created for Huntington students, complete with various worksheets and guides including the Guidance Department's Post Secondary Planning Guide and the "Appraising Myself as I Plan for the Future" packet.
The college search function allows students to narrow a list of about 4,300 colleges and universities based upon a variety of factors the student will identify, including academic major, cost and location, etc.
"College searches can be saved and edited for future use and ultimately, students can create a list of schools, compare them and track application deadlines," Mrs. Walsh said.
Post-secondary planning meetings for juniors can be scheduled with Mrs. Walsh as soon as a student completes the "Appraising Myself as I Plan for the Future" packet. Copies of the packet are available on the Huntington School District's website.
For more information contact Mrs. Walsh at bwalsh@hufsd.edu or 673-2131.