As many students begin their spring break vacations this month, many high school students and their parents may start the initial rite of college passage: the campus visit! But, with over 3000 colleges in the United States alone, how do you begin to develop a college list?
Juniors: Now might be a good time to take stock of who you are as a person, what you might want to major in at university, and where you might want to go to school.
So before you start your college tours, why not consider taking a self-assessment and personality quiz? The best way to begin a college search is to look at yourself, not a list of colleges: Think about how you like to socialize, to learn, to relax. It is your assessment and understanding of your interests, attitudes, and abilities that will help you find your best-fit school.
There are two excellent personality and career tests that can be found online for free!
The Myers-Briggs
One of the most well known assessments, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator results in a four-letter “type”—INFP or ESFJ, for example. The test is meant to identify underlying preferences for each of four dichotomies (such as introvert and extrovert) and describes 16 distinctive personality traits.
Holland Code
This assessment examines your suitability with different careers based on six occupational themes: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. The test identifies your top interest area and how it compares to the other areas, and what this means for your career interests.
Also, there are several excellent resources that I use as part of my proprietary research through Guided Path.
• Find My Spark™ Find My Spark™ is a personality assessment college survey tool that helps students discover their more developed personality traits and preferred learning styles and matches those characteristics to a list of colleges, majors, and careers that fit a student’s natural tendencies.
• College Match: This survey is from College Match: A Blueprint for Choosing the School for You, Dr. Steven R. Antonoff’s guide for students and parents. The purpose of College Match is to help students find colleges where they will be happy and successful.
• Design a College: The Design a College survey was written by Wendie Lubic, The College Lady, who is an Independent Educational Consultant in Washington DC. This study helps identify students’ priorities and desires to help find that great college fit.
Here are some other free sites that I highly recommend.
• Bureau of Labor and Statistics Career Guide – link your favorite subject in school to a possible career
• True Colors Personality Test – What kind of person are you?
• Job Diagnosis – assess skills, interests, and abilities to match career options
• Live Career – learn about your work personality
• Jung Personality Test – how do you interact with others, and how are you perceived?
• The Career Key – career test matches personality with career options
High School Seniors always talk about their “ah ha” moment — the minute they KNEW that THIS SCHOOL was the university that they would make home for the next four years! A bit of self reflection will go along way in terms of nudging that process along.
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