Career Tests Can Help Teens Pick a College

That was two weeks ago. Now, the Cupertino, Calif., teenager knows she wants to study journalism or law and has already put together a list of about 20 colleges to consider that excel in those fields. The college list will be narrowed down even further and she will have a much more specific field of study in mind — a possible career, even — over the next several weeks.

That's the result of Gholami's work with Jeffrey Morrison, a college planner in Campbell, Calif. Morrison's method: Help the teenager decide on a career first. Then find a college based on that. Morrison's first step with Gholami was to put her through a career-planning test that, through a series of questions about her skills, values and interests, suggested the career paths that best suit the teenager's personality.

The idea that a 16- or 17-year-old could take a test and decide what they want to do for the rest of their life may sound ludicrous. There's a reason, after all, why students don't have to declare a major until their second or even third year in college: They can use those years to take classes in various fields, explore, even make mistakes until they find the subjects and ultimately careers that inspire them. Such are the principles of a liberal arts education.

But with the average college now running a $30,300 annual tab for private and $12,800 for public school, finding your life's calling through academic exploration could lead to costly mistakes. "What we're finding is that kids are taking, on average, two more years to finish a four-year degree," says Amy Erickson, a Certified College Planning Specialist (CCPS) in Parker, Colorado. "And that could be another $100,000, just to get a bachelor's degree."

The solution, some college planners now believe, is helping teenagers essentially choose their major before they even apply to college. And the way to do that is with career planning tests: a collection of psychological profile questions that get teens to focus on their strengths, values and skills and think about possible career paths and the appropriate fields of study, which then becomes a leading factor in choosing the appropriate colleges to apply to. Erikson's own son, James, was planning to attend Cornell or Grinnell — both offered generous financial-aid packages — to study sciences until a career proficiency test revealed that he'd be better off studying music (something he had always enjoyed but hadn't considered as a future career). Based on the test results, James opted instead to attend New York University — and pay much more in tuition costs.

Psychological profiling has long been used in career counseling in high schools, colleges and for adults in career transition. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), one of the most widely used personality assessment tests by U.S. employers, was created back in the 1940s. Another popular tool, MCP by Career Dimensions, has been used by high school and college counselors since 1990.

One of the first college planners to bring career tests into his private practice was Eric Goodhart, director of Programs for Education in Lunenburg, Mass. For the past 15 years, Goodhart has been taking his clients through a series of self-assessments as a first step of the college selection process. Now, an increasing number of college planners with private practices are following Goodhart's example. Morrison, the Campbell, Calif., consultant, has been using the tests only for about a year, but already considers them the most important aspect of his work with clients.

"The fact is that kids by themselves really don't know how to pick a college or why, and the parents aren't experienced in helping them," Morrison says. He is quick to point out the idea behind career planning isn't about picking a career for life, but to pick the best school for the student, albeit with career ideas behind it. "That's the idea of going to college in the first place," he says.

To liberal arts educators, that's an alarming thought. Timothy Peltason, a professor of English at Wellesley College, says some of the most "heartening stories" of undergraduates in his program are students who "made real intellectual discoveries and discoveries about themselves" several semesters into their time in school. "I'm concerned that such [career planning] programs are part of a larger trend that really takes against the spirit of open intellectual exploration that liberal arts are supposed to encourage," he says.

And then there are scholars who point to the purely practical shortcomings of attempting to choose a career — and letting it guide college choices — at the tender age of 16. "The world is changing, there are new jobs being created, there are old jobs disappearing and there are new opportunities occurring," says John Krumboltz, professor of education and psychology at Stanford University and author of the book "Luck is No Accident: Making the Most of Happenstance in Your Life and Career." "And furthermore, people change their mind as they experience these new alternatives and learn new skills and develop new interests. Therefore, trying to declare an occupational goal at age 16 is absurd."

Career planning can have its success stories, to be sure. Erickson points to one of her clients, a valedictorian in his high school class who had no idea what he wanted to study and was planning to enroll in the local state university. After six weeks of going over the tests and talking about career paths, he had decided to major in international business, with a minor in mathematics, at Johns Hopkins University. "He's so excited about what he's going to major in and already thinking about his Master's degree," Erickson says.

That would be the perfect happy ending, of course, unless some years down the road that student decided international business isn't what he wants to study, after all. "I just hope that he will feel free to change his mind," Krumboltz says. "The very fact that [students] are sent to these services, it means the parents probably believe that you can predict what the kid is going to want to do." Hope may be a little more like it.