There are always many decisions to make as part of a child’s education journey and our Carfax consultants are firm believers that to make clear and confident choices you need information. In order for us to be able to give our clients the best possible advice, we use a suite of online profiling tools which help us to ascertain a student’s interests, academic ability and motivations. Armed with this information making decisions about university choices, school placement options and careers planning all become much easier.

University choices

With over 50,000 degrees and 360 universities in the UK alone, trying to work out which course and which university is going to be the best choice can feel overwhelming. For many students, this is the first big decision that they have a major say in and this can put huge pressure on them. At pre-university age, students can struggle to put their hobbies and motivations into a system such as UCAS and cross reference these to gain an understanding of what degree they would like to study.

Our University Profiling is a straightforward online assessment which asks a series of questions about a student’s interests, the questions require a simple Yes/No or Maybe reply. Whilst the questions maybe deceptively simple, the results can be surprisingly revealing. Not only does it identify the top matches in terms of degree disciplines, it ranks them in order of interest level and overall suitability. Just because you have always wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, for example, it does not necessarily mean you have all the right attributes to make this a successful degree choice.

With profiling we can identify where the gaps are, work out how we can support the student to work on these areas and then make sure they are building a profile that will position them to make a successful university application.

The profiling report can also identify a range of options that have never been previously considered. Who knew you could study Business with Creative Computing, or Art History with Maths? New UK universities, such as Ravensbourne University, in particular, are offering diverse and modern courses such as Urban Landscape architecture, and Music and sound design, which can be ideal for children with specific hobbies they want to pursue or for children with a specific career in mind.

We generally recommend taking this profiling assessment in Year 11, to health check IB or A Level subject choices and make sure the student in picking a strong subject combination to ensure they can progress onto their chosen degree path. We regularly recommend it in Year 12 when students need to be focusing on exploring and refining what they want to study at university.

Career Choices

Whilst some students have a clear idea of what they want to do when they leave school, the majority do not. This comes to a head when you have to start selecting which academic subjects you want to take forward for GCSE’s or A Levels, for example. By doing a careers profiling assessment, we can match the students’ abilities and interests to range of different careers families and explore what different employment opportunities there are for different skill sets. This can really help a student to start linking their learning to beyond the classroom but thinking how their subject choices relate to their future career paths.

We find this test is a very helpful tool in Year 9, particularly in the British Curriculum when students are choosing their GCSE subjects. But it is also relevant to students at later points in their education too.

UKiset

The UKiset is a series of online tests which assess a child’s academic potential. The tests are not about passing and failing and do not assess prior learned knowledge, but instead, focus on a child’s ability to achieve academically. The tests are verbal and nonverbal skills and English Language ability, including a written essay. The results of the assessment give quantitative information about where your child sits bench-marked against their UK peer group, and asses academic ability. When teamed with student profiling, this can create a very strong image for consultants as to where your child will thrive in the British system and where their needs and aspirations will be best met. For more information on the UKiset, please click here: https://www.carfax-education.com/eu-en/news/blog/ukiset-what-is-it-how-will-it-help-me

Our online Student profiling assessments take information about a child’s interests, hobbies, academic subjects, motivations and aspirations and cross-reference them to generate paths which will be suitable for their specific education journey. The results can help a child to break out of pre-conceived and stereotyped ideas around specific subjects, allowing them to explore their options to the fullest and flourish in a field they may not have known was open to them.

Carfax understand that selecting a university course, subject choices or a new school is an incredibly personal decision but armed with information that is specifically tailored to each child, that decision making can suddenly become much easier.

‍