As of March 1, the college search app Naviance will be completely gone from WA and the app Scoir will be taking its place. Guidance counselors started visiting advisory rooms to set the students up with Scoir and help them navigate the cite. Guidance coordinator Wendy Pechacek explained how Naviance’s customer service wasn’t helpful when problems with the site came up.

“We’ve had trouble with Naviance for a few years now because they change the software without telling the consumer. So, when we go to use it or when we teach parents or students every year how to use it for different things, it doesn’t look the same, it doesn’t work the same and they don’t tell you ahead of time,” Pechacek said.

Westford has been going through many budget cuts this year; although the switch from Naviance to Scoir was more driven by the software and usefulness of the site, Scoir is free, as compared to Naviance, which costs about $8,000 a year. Incorporated in Scoir is a notifications tool that will replace the app remind currently used by the guidance department now ro remind students of upcoming events.

“[Scoir] is going to replace Remind because Remind used to be free and then they decided to charge if you have more than 125 people in a group…and they were going to charge $9,000 a year for that,” Pechacek said.

Scoir also comes with a mobile app that will send students text messages as Remind did. Scoir’s software allows students to specifically search for what they want at a college and appears more user-friendly for students.

“I think for the students it looks like social media which is much more engaging, intuitive, and easy to understand,” Pechacek said.

Through social media, Scoir allows students to see what’s going on in the area around their college so they can get a feel for what life there would be like.

“You’re actually researching what’s going to be a good fit for you and if the college doesn’t have those things that you want Scoir can show you that,” Pechacek said.

Pechacek started researching an alternative to Naviance at the end of last school year and over the summer by calling other schools to find out what they use. She then introduced the software to the guidance office in the fall of this school year.

“We all did 2 hours worth of training so we could learn all the different aspects of it,” Pechacek said.

The guidance office started introducing Scoir to students by inviting the juniors in the January advisory; they plan to introduce the seniors to Scoir in the February advisory. The sophomores and freshmen will get set up with Scoir in the springtime since they don’t need it as much right now.

“Everybody in the department is excited, its working and it’s kind of scary to introduce something when its new to us since we don’t know all the answers, but with everything we’ve learned so far we think it’s a good option,” Pechacek said.