How to Use Scoir to Optimize Your Counseling Responsibilities

It’s the first day of school. The halls buzz with eager students reuniting to discuss their summer breaks and new course schedules. 

After chatting with your colleagues and students, you head to your counseling office.

You sit down with your coffee to review your email inbox (20 new unread emails since yesterday) and today’s schedule…busy! Welcome to the 2023-2024 school year.

As a former high school counselor, I understand a counselor’s laundry list of responsibilities from college advising and parent meetings to course change requests and social-emotional counseling. Counselors can appreciate actionable tips to better manage their day-to-day responsibilities. 

Read on to discover how Scoir can be used to optimize your counseling responsibilities this year. 

How to Use Scoir as a Counselor This Year

Check out these 10 ways you can utilize Scoir this school year.

1. Prepare students with the Scoir resources at your fingertips

Within Helpful Links on your counselor dashboard, you can access Scoir Student Checklists. Use these checklists to guide students through their exploration each year in their Scoir account. Send the checklists to your students at the beginning of the year or use the checklists with students in one-on-one conversations this fall. 

Don’t forget to remind students to download the Scoir Student Mobile App to stay connected with colleges and their supporters directly from their phones. 

Your students are bound to love the Scoir Student App! Scoir’s iOS app has a five-star rating from over 1,800 users.

2. Inform parents and guardians about how they can support their student(s) with Scoir

Our students’ supporters play a big role in the post-secondary planning process. 

On Scoir parents and guardians have free access to resources such as a financial aid cost calculator, college and career search, college suggestions, and the Scoir Parent App. 

If your parents and guardians are looking for more information about how to use Scoir, these Scoir resources can help.

• Article: How to Get Started on Scoir as a Parent or Guardian
• Webinar: Back-to-School with Scoir: For Parents/Guardians

3. Dedicate time to a college admissions refresher

We know the college admissions landscape is always changing. To better prepare your students and families for success and to keep yourself informed, carve some time out of your day to review these changes to the college admissions process. 

Staying informed about the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling is essential for counselors in the college advising space. 

Additionally, students have a number of questions about the new digital SAT and FAFSA changes for the upcoming school years. By staying up-to-date with the latest information, counselors can save time and better advise their students this year.

4. Participate in Scoir’s back-to-school training for counselors

Did you know that Scoir offers training on specific features and functionality for new and veteran school counselors during the back-to-school season?

Register for live Scoir training on a variety of different topics including:

• Back-to-School Counselor Checklists: How to prepare your Scoir account for the new school year
• How to Apply with Scoir
• Managing application documents in Scoir

You can register to attend Scoir’s live training directly from Helpful Links on your counselor dashboard. If you’re interested in on-demand training, you can revisit all Scoir modules in your account as well.

5. Let Scoir’s Library and email subscription management do the work for you 

Scoir’s Library and email subscription management lets automation run in the background while you tend to other valuable counseling duties. The Scoir Library includes pre-loaded emails to streamline communications with your students on a variety of topics, including financing college, self-discovery, courses and academies, and college essay prep tips featuring College Essay Guy. 

Work with your colleagues to create an email timeline to send out relevant student and/or parent emails to your school community. When the time comes, emails can be scheduled to be sent on the day of your choosing

6. Take advantage of Scoir’s counselor-favorite features for a seamless college application season

Scoir was built for counselors, with counselors. As you work with your student caseload this year, utilize Scoir’s counselor-favorite features to work smarter, not harder.

• Visits: After your high school sets visit availability for the upcoming school year, encourage your students to sign up for rep visits from their Student Dashboard to engage with college representatives! By interacting directly with a representative from the college, your students will get a better sense of the college’s offerings, campus, food, and activities available to them.
• Surveys: If you’re looking to gather information from your students and families, surveys are your one-stop-shop to customize what questions you’d like answers to and get replies fast! Students receive push notifications and emails about new surveys. Get creative with transition-to-high school surveys, brag sheets, and post-secondary planning questionnaires.
• MyDrive: Collaborate with your students and families through MyDrive, a storage space for student supporters to work together on essay feedback suggestions, course planning, and so much more.
• Notes: Document your meetings with students in Scoir’s private Notes section. Following student meetings, jot down any notes that you want to circle back to at your next meeting to pick up where you left off! 

7. Support your students during career and college discovery 

As students pursue a variety of post-secondary pathways, including college, career, military, and trade school, Scoir provides counselors with the insights they need to guide their students through the discovery process. 

• The PrinciplesYou Character Assessment engages Gen Z students about careers and measures them across three dimensions: Cognitive, Interpersonal, and Motivational. Students can take this assessment in a class period to receive career matches and a full report to help them better understand their tendencies.
• Students can take the 5 minute Career Interest Assessment to match their interests with careers!
• Scoir’s Find Your College Match Quiz puts students in the driver’s seat where they can customize their ideal college experience by selecting possible majors, campus types, geographic locations, and more. Then, Scoir takes that information and matches students with colleges.

8. Utilize Scoir’s College Readiness Curriculum throughout the year 

With over 50+ ASCA-compliant lesson plans for grades 9-12, counselors can use Scoir’s College Readiness Curriculum in its entirety or as standalone lessons for students. The curriculum (available under Helpful Links on your counselor dashboard) will give you the flexibility to choose specific topics based on your preferences and students’ needs. 

Explore topics with students such as college readiness, career exploration, the college search process, military careers, financial literacy, digital literacy, college athletics, and more.

9. End your school year on the right foot with send docs, reports, and checklists

As you say goodbye to one class and hello to another, counselors can use Scoir’s Year-End Checklist to tidy their Scoir account. This includes one final check on account settings, scattergrams, and sending final transcripts at the end of the year. 

If you prefer webinars to checklists, check out Scoir’s On-Demand Counselor Training for the End of Year Scoir Wrap-Up under Helpful Links in the Scoir platform.

10. Learn and grow with Scoir’s professional development opportunities 

Looking to grow in your career as a school counselor? There are a number of ways counselors can uplevel their professional development with Scoir. 

• Listen: Scoir’s Inside College Admissions Podcast offers conversations with thought leaders in the field of education and college admissions. Tune in to hear from professionals in the world of higher education and school counseling. 
• Learn: Explore Scoir U to receive professional development certifications in areas such as Social-Emotional Learning and General College Counseling. With the increasing prevalence of social-emotional counseling, Scoir collaborated with leading experts in the field to bring you the Social Emotional Learning (SEL) certification, designed to build foundational knowledge and professional skills for research-based SEL concepts.
• Watch: Keep an eye out for future Scoir emails about upcoming thought leadership webinars for counselors throughout the year!

With the 2023-2024 school year approaching, remember, you’ve got this. Take a deep breath and enjoy the ride. For future ideas on how to use Scoir to optimize your counseling responsibilities this year, don’t forget to bookmark this post! 😊