New system to be used this year with Naviance for recommendation letters
Perhaps when administration decided on making students print out worksheets at home as opposed to the teachers doing it for us, we were a bit doubtful of the great eco-friendly benefits this action proposed. However, as the greatly anticipated and dreaded college application season draws upon the class of 2011, the new paperless method for sending in college forms online through Naviance actually seems logical to many students.
During years prior, the traditional filling-out-the-recommendation-form-by-hand, making countless photocopies, individually addressing envelopes to each school, and delivering this bulky package to the teacher was a large factor in the already stressful process of college applications. Furthermore, it was a hassle on the counselors' end.
"The transcript might come in one day and the copy center makes copies to go out; somewhere in between there's a delay and then our registrar gets a message saying we haven't received the transcript and then she has to fax it over last-minute," Career Center director Miriam Taba said.
Of course, to balance out the inconvenience for all parties involved, the colleges had to undergo being inundated with hundreds of incoming letters and Secondary School Reports a day from the thousands of students applying, resulting in the high chance of losing letters in the mail or receiving wrongly addressed ones.
However, as colleges try to catch up to their tech savvy students, they are beginning to accept teacher recommendations and grade reports online. Many schools started to use this method several years back, with Lynbrook being the first in the district.
"Lynbrook did it last year electronically, and we were going to explore it more, and then we started to hear that they were having problems, so we said, 'Let's wait and let them figure out the bugs and handle it first'," Taba said. Lynbrook addressed the glitches, so now MVHS guidance counselors will submit grade reports and recommendations online, and teachers have the option to do the same.
Last year, AP Economics teacher Pete Pelkey had the chance to be the first and only teacher at MVHS to try out submitting a recommendation online when a student had a last-minute request for a recommendation letter, with no time to send it in the mail.
"I got confirmation within seconds that it arrived at the university, and he came in later that day to my class and said, 'I checked my email, it's there, it's taken care of," Pelkey said. "That for me is a big relief because anytime you put anything in the mail, you're not sure what's going to happen to it or if anybody is going to find it."
For students, this method will be a great time saver.
"If you're applying to six schools, we only have to do the secondary school report once and you list all the schools there, and press send and it sends to all six. You don't have to stuff envelopes, you don't have to stuff them into the right envelopes,î Taba said.
On the colleges' end, this method will maintain organization of the students' files, according to Taba. With readers from all over, the admissions team would have to have the members come down and pick up the applications, make copies of the various documents, and return them. However, with the online option, all admissions team members can read the forms wherever they are and have access to them instantaneously.
This year and perhaps beyond, instead of handing over a hefty package of envelopes, stamps, paperclips, and forms to multiple teachers, seniors will send their requests via email, and the teachers will add the students' profiles to their own Naviance accounts. From there, teachers have all the way up to the deadline to submit the recommendation with just one click rather than making photocopies, sealing them in envelopes, and rushing to meet the 5 p.m. postmark deadline. Of course, some teachers will prefer to stick to their year-after-year traditions and would rather avoid learning and getting accustomed to this newfangled process, but the majority have agreed to try this method out.
"It's really convenient," said guidance counselor Shari Schussel. "There's money [saved] as far as copies are concerned, as far as postage is concerned; manpower – before it was the registrar that had to make all the copies, stuff all the envelopes, so she is now freed up to do more important things."
Currently the administrators are working out some last-minute technical kinks on the website, but it should be up and running in time for early decision submissions