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YouScience champion and Independent Education Consultant Leigh Moore discusses the College Success Profile and its place in college counseling…
Q: To give us a sense of the state of college counseling, what are some of the biggest challenges you face right now in your profession? How do you think the YouScience College Success Profile will help you with these challenges?
A: It’s sometimes tough to guide a student to identify an internal motivation for going to college. He may know that higher education is the next step, or that its pursuit is expected of him, or that the market tends to pay more to degree holders. He may approach the application like a game—that is, to see if he can “get in.” But those reasons are superficial and not generally enduring or inspiring. If a student finds a field of study which offers both interest and opportunity, the college search is a lot easier—and much more fun.
Therefore, it follows that, once a student has the information gleaned from the CSP in front of him, his college search can become more focused.
Q: How does YouScience compare to the current tools that you use when working with a student?
A: Of all the instruments I’ve used, YouScience has earned the most student buy-in. I’ve had no problems convincing my students that the two hours the inventory demands are worth it. They tend to actually enjoy taking the assessments. One student texted me, “The activities were interesting and most were fun, so I wasn’t bored at all.” The interface is extremely user-friendly and polished, and I think the students respond to a high-quality platform.
Q: How do you incorporate YouScience into your own work? Do you use it to complement what you are already doing? How does it specifically help you do your job better?
A: I let all of my existing students know that the College Success Profile is available to them.. I encourage all students 15 or older to take it, and only a few have declined the offer. Those few have, for the most part, already taken some inventories or are unusually confident about a specific career path. For my new students, YouScience is one of the first tasks to complete for me. Its summary results afford me an abundance of individualized information—and the test itself establishes that our work together will be introspective, substantive, and hopefully transformational.
Q: Does this change the landscape for professionals such as yourself? If so, how?
A: I think so. I’m not a vocational coach and simply cannot accomplish in two hours what YouScience does. For example: A field an Alabama student had never considered floated to the top of suggested careers in her results—speech pathology. The girl was elated, saying, “I’d never have thought of being a speech pathologist!” Would I have happened upon that suggestion for her without YouScience? I doubt it. Her college search quickly became a targeted search—the student found her motivation.