Boy did this come at a good time for us! I’ve got two boys here that need to figure out what they’re going to be when they grow up soon! One of the latest product for review with the Old Schoolhouse Crew was The Complete Career, College, and High School Guide for Homeschoolers from Educational Diagnostic Prescriptive Services (EDUDPS.)
The guide contain four assessments that your student takes and scores to give them input on what college and career path might be right for them. These are not quick little check lists but lengthy assessments that took my boys about 1 ½ hours to complete. Once they did this they recorded their “scores” on a “career summation form”. This form then tells them what to do with each result and where to go to get information pertaining to that result. Each step from there takes time to look through lists and think through the information given about each result.
If this sounds complicated it’s really not, complex yes, but not complicated. They just followed the steps as outlined in the guide and it gave them some direction based on their result. It doesn’t give just one career or college major but rather several ideas and lists of possibilities for them to choose from. We started to see a lot of overlap between the results of each assessment that gave the boys some directions to look at for their future.
Once they make some choices they then fill out a Career Plan Form. This is where the action plan comes in. From the work they’ve already done they now form an “action plan” of sorts. This is where they plan to do things like interview people in the careers they’re considering, decide or consider what courses to take based on recommendations for the choices you made and consider activities from lists that also go along with your choices. This “action” part we have not had time to complete yet.
From everything so far you can see why the author suggests this could be ½ credit on your transcript!
One of the things I appreciated about The Complete Career, College, and High School Guide for Homeschoolers was the comments about lifestyle as well as just career. For instance it’s pointed out that boys may want to consider if what they are choosing would give them time for a family and girls are asked to consider some careers that lend themselves to part time or from home. These are just given as things to consider but definitely are not something you’d find in a secular resource!
Besides being a great assessment tool it has many bonuses like CLEP testing formation and suggestions, SAT prep suggestions, transcript information and more. I would not say it gives lengthy information on these “extra’s” but enough to get you going.
We look forward to working more with the information in the coming months and planning the course for my two boys. So far for my oldest it really helped confirm a couple directions he was already headed. This gives us more confidence in going ahead and investing more money and time into these areas. For our younger son who is “almost” completely undecided and really wanting a direction it gave him some areas to check out and really made him think about possibilities. We hope over the next year to follow some of the suggestions for checking out a few possibilities.
I think this would be very helpful for any homeschool family that has middle or high schoolers. It’s on sale for a limited time in e-book form for $26.20 or $39.95 for soft bound printed. We did work with the e-book but I would just caution on this one it’s 225 pages. It worked for us just to print the assessments for the kids to take and the form pages to fill out which was probably about 50-60 pages. I let them look over the lists and other things right on the computer.
Please do note how their e-books work before you make your decision. It’s not the typical pdf type you might be used to. Our computer worked fine with their system but I was very concerned with getting it printed as their system only allows two prints. I was very reassured when I contacted them that they would work with me to make sure I got what I needed before my two “prints” expired.
This one also has a free sample so check it out too!
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