Heard this on a campus tour?

Our team has been on many (MANY!) campus tours. Almost all start the same way: the student tour guide goes around the group and asks for everyone’s name and planned major.

Each teen squeaks out an answer–biology, psychology, business, etc.

What’s never heard on a tour? “What is your vision for AFTER after you graduate college?”

Why is this distinction important? Why do we focus so much on the destination…that “first job”? There are several reasons:

• Without some sense of potential careers that fit, students can’t make good choices while in high school and college to move them along a path to a job after they graduate.
• Hope is not enough. We’ve seen too many college grads who lacked career understanding working in jobs that don’t require a college degree after graduation.
• College costs too much! Doing important thinking before college will help the student focus on gaining the necessary knowledge and experience in a timely way.
• Families need to choose a college which will get their child to that first job. If you don’t know your needs, how will you choose a school which will meet them?
• Parents and students suffer unnecessary (sometimes paralyzing) stress and anxiety when they get to college and realize they have no path forward.

We want students to make confident decisions. We want them to know the questions to ask. We want them to be armed with self knowledge.

Guided Self Assessment was created for this purpose and since 2012, we have coached students across the United States (Grades 10 & up) through in-depth conversations, coaxing out the details, identifying a wide variety of potential careers of interest, and getting them started with career exploration.

We would love to tell you about the process in a free 30-minute family meeting. (No sales pressure! That’s not our style. We will just share about what Guided Self Assessment is and is not, so your family can decide whether it is a fit for you.) Schedule your appointment with our online calendar. Meetings can be virtual nationwide or in-person in Central Ohio.

We will leave you with a question we come back to again and again.

If your student does not have a clear path or an idea of the questions to ask to guide them along that path, what magic event do you hope will occur which will give your student clarity about their future? Taking action now always feels better than crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

Even if Guided Self Assessment is not a fit for your family, please be sure to give structured thought to these questions and take action so that your student can make decisions based on sound knowledge.

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