Pre-College Career Exploration and Coaching
High schoolers are not ready to pick a career, but they are ready to start exploring options related to their passions, interests, and strengths. Career coaching complements our development and college match work. When empowered with this information, students can better consider how to select and pitch themselves to a college.
Talking about choices with a career coach helps students decide how they will use their undergraduate experience. Perhaps they thought they wanted to specialize as an undergraduate in a field like business, journalism, or engineering, but after learning more realize that they prefer to explore a broader range of courses and choose a focus for graduate school.
Our career coaches can also dispel some misconceptions. For example, many high schoolers interested in business feel they need to specialize as an undergraduate, but according to our career coaches, an undergraduate business degree does not confer an advantage and could even be limiting.
For students considering potential careers for the first time, our coaches will keep conversations exploratory, focused on the student’s academic preferences, personal interests, and values. From there, they will discuss possible college majors in areas of interest. Extracurriculars, volunteering, and part-time jobs can be avenues of exploration.
For students with a specific career in mind — business, medicine, education for example — our coaches will get more granular, introducing possible avenues, talking about various specializations, and even connecting students with people in the industry.
These conversations will not only help students gain clarity on where to apply, but can help them identify a potential major they can discuss in their supplemental essays. They will not be bound to this major, but since colleges want candidates who have an idea of how they will use their college degree, expressing an understanding of how a major links to a potential path will enhance their admissions chances.
