Starfish Retention Solutions vs OVR IT: What's the Difference?
Starfish connects students to advisors and tracks outreach. OVR IT gives students daily tools to manage their coursework. Different problems, different layers.
TL;DR
Verdict: OVR IT for daily student support; Starfish for advisor and case-management workflows. Best for ADHD: OVR IT.
25-minute version
Read the verdict, the 'who should choose which' section, and the FAQ at the bottom for the essential take.
Why this comparison matters for ADHD students
Starfish Retention Solutions, now part of EAB, is one of the most widely deployed student success platforms in higher education. It's the system behind the "your professor flagged you for missing class" emails that most students have received, and the appointment scheduling tool many advisors use. It's infrastructure for the institution's support ecosystem, useful, widely used, and deeply focused on the coordination layer rather than the student-facing daily experience.
Early alert systems like Starfish improve advisor response time, but retention outcomes depend on what interventions follow the alert.
Karp, M.M. & Bork, R.H. (2014). "They Never Told Me What to Expect." Community College Journal of Research and Practice.
ADHD students who receive proactive outreach but lack daily self-management tools show limited long-term retention improvement.
Weyandt, L.L. et al. (2013). Pharmacological interventions for ADHD in higher education. Journal of Attention Disorders.
ADHD verdict: OVR IT for daily student support; Starfish for advisor and case-management workflows
Starfish manages the relationships and workflows of student support. When a professor submits an early alert about a struggling student, that alert lives in Starfish. When an advisor schedules a follow-up appointment, that's in Starfish. When disability services documents an accommodation approval, it often connects to Starfish. The platform is a coordination hub: it ensures that the right person knows about a student's situation and that follow-ups don't fall through the cracks. For advisors managing caseloads of hundreds of students, it's genuinely valuable infrastructure.
The student side of Starfish is thinner. Students can schedule appointments, view their flags and kudos, and sometimes access resource referrals. But the daily experience is sparse, Starfish isn't built for students to use every day. It's built for advisors to use every day. An ADHD student with a Starfish account can see that they were flagged for missing class, schedule an appointment, and show up to that appointment. What happens between appointments, the daily executive function challenge of managing coursework, prioritizing assignments, and actually doing the work, is entirely outside what Starfish provides.
The gap Starfish leaves is exactly the space OVR IT fills. After an advisor has the early-alert conversation with an ADHD student, what does the student actually do differently on Tuesday morning? What tells them which assignment to open first? What helps them start when they sit down to study and can't initiate? Starfish can coordinate a referral to disability services, to tutoring, to the writing center. OVR IT is the daily tool the student uses between those appointments. For universities serious about retention outcomes for ADHD students, both layers are needed, the coordination infrastructure and the daily student tool.
Feature comparison: OVR IT vs Starfish Retention Solutions
| Feature | OVR IT | Starfish Retention Solutions |
|---|---|---|
| Student daily use | ✓ Yes, designed for daily engagement | Occasional, appointments and alerts |
| Grade-impact prioritization | ✓ Yes | No |
| ADHD-specific design | ✓ Yes | No |
| Deployment complexity | ✓ Self-serve (student) | Enterprise implementation |
Best for ADHD: OVR IT
- Daily student-facing tool that addresses ADHD executive function challenges directly
- Available between advisor appointments when most of the real work happens
- Grade-impact prioritization and task initiation support built specifically for ADHD
- No institutional implementation required
- Provides structured daily support that compensates for ADHD self-management deficits without requiring advisor involvement
Who should choose which tool
Choose OVR IT if…
- →Students who need daily structured support between advisor appointments
- →ADHD students whose challenge is daily execution, not access to advisors
- →Disability services offices looking for scalable student-facing tools
- →Any student who needs help with assignment prioritization and task initiation
Stick with Starfish Retention Solutions if…
- →Universities building or improving their early alert and advisor coordination infrastructure
- →Advising offices that need case management and appointment scheduling
- →Institutions wanting to connect faculty alerts to advisor workflows
- →Student success teams managing large student populations across multiple touchpoints
Pricing comparison
| Tool | Pricing | ADHD value assessment |
|---|---|---|
| OVR IT | Free for students; institutional licensing available | Zero cost for students; complements existing institutional infrastructure |
| Starfish Retention Solutions | Enterprise pricing via EAB (not public) | High institutional cost; returns depend on advisor utilization rates |
Final recommendation
Starfish coordinates institutional support; OVR IT gives students the daily tool to act on it. Universities wanting to improve ADHD retention outcomes need both the coordination layer and the student-facing daily support layer.
Frequently asked questions
What is Starfish Retention Solutions?
Starfish Retention Solutions is a student success platform now owned by EAB that manages early alert workflows, advisor case management, and appointment scheduling in higher education. Faculty submit early alerts when they observe struggling students; those alerts route to advisors in Starfish; advisors schedule appointments and track intervention outcomes. It's a coordination and workflow tool for the institutional support ecosystem. Students can log in to see alerts, schedule appointments, and access referrals, but daily student-facing engagement is not Starfish's core design.
How is Starfish different from EAB Navigate?
Starfish and EAB Navigate are both now products under the EAB umbrella and serve overlapping functions in the student success space. EAB Navigate is more comprehensive and integrated, covering advising workflows, campaign management, and degree planning alongside early alerts. Starfish has historically been stronger on the early alert and case-flagging side. In practice, institutions often use one or the other rather than both. Both are advisor-facing platforms with limited student-facing daily functionality, a gap that student-facing tools like OVR IT address.
Does Starfish help students with ADHD?
Starfish helps connect ADHD students to institutional support resources through early alerts and appointment systems. When a professor flags an ADHD student who has been missing class or struggling on assignments, an advisor can reach out quickly through Starfish. This coordination function has genuine value. What Starfish doesn't provide is the daily student-facing support that ADHD students need between those advisor contacts: structured task management, grade-impact prioritization, and tools for the executive function challenges that cause academic difficulty in the first place.
What happens to a student after a Starfish early alert is sent?
After a Starfish early alert, the expected workflow is: advisor receives the flag, advisor contacts the student (email or appointment request), student and advisor meet, advisor identifies appropriate resources, advisor documents the interaction and follow-up plan. The effectiveness of this process depends on advisor capacity, student follow-through, and the quality of resources the advisor can actually refer to. Many institutions find that the coordination works well but that students lack daily structured support between appointments, which is where OVR IT fills the gap.
Can disability services use both Starfish and OVR IT?
Yes, and this combination addresses more of the ADHD retention problem than either tool alone. Disability services offices use Starfish to manage accommodation workflows and connect flagged students to advisors. OVR IT can be recommended as a student-facing daily tool during those same appointments. The student leaves with both institutional support access (managed in Starfish) and a daily structure tool (OVR IT) that works between appointments. This two-layer approach, institutional coordination plus student daily support, addresses the full scope of ADHD academic challenges more effectively than either platform covers alone.
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