As the school year comes to an end, the search for scholarships continues. Before the 2015-2016 school year, students had to find scholarships on their own or go to the counselors for help. This year, the counselors introduced the website, Naviance, as a tool for scholarship searches and much more.

“[The counselors] have this lovely book about the state of arkansas [with] fabulous information that [the state] gives us,” head counselor Amy Oury said. “[On Naviance it] is the entire nation with very similar information. This is Naviance’s job, it’s not mine or yours.”

Naviance lists local scholarships that might give a couple hundred dollars and national scholarships that offer thousands.

“Those are those great, big, huge national scholarships where there’s no telling how many people will try to get, but somebody’s got to get it, so why not try,” Oury said. “There [are] over three million scholarships there.”

The site offers more structure and organization than if a student were searching for a scholarship alone.

“You can actually keep track of the scholarships you’re applying for,” Oury said. “For seniors, the ones who are really using Naviance, they’re loving the organization aspect of it. It’s truly wonderful for them.”

The counselors were introduced to Naviance in the 2014-2015 school year and decided to implement it quickly.

“I didn’t find it, but I was one of the people who looked at it and said, ‘This is neat,’” Oury said. “There’s just so many different things out there. It takes about 20 different resources and combines it, which just makes it great for everybody.”

This tool is relatively new to most of the flyover states, operating mostly on the coasts.

“It’s really new to Arkansas,” Oury said. “When you look at the east and west coast (California and Pennsylvania), it’s very common. It’s kind of filtering itself into the middle of the country now.”

The counselors are still in the process of filtering over all local scholarships from their old website to Naviance.

“If you go to the Bryant Schools website, we do still have a counselor’s website,” Oury said. “We didn’t want to totally take things away, like the Arkansas scholarships, until we had made that process.”

Naviance is a tool that can help any student in their search for either the right college or paying for it.
“I can’t speak for everybody,” Oury said. “But when we were doing our research, we just realized this is a fantastic resource, and we had a great opportunity.”