Career Planning
These web sites will help you with the career planning process:
Assessment Tools
Skills & Abilities, Personality, Values, Comprehensive Sites
These quizzes and inventories are tools that you can use to find out more about who you are and what you want to do with your life and career.
Interests
- Career Cruising
Here you will be able to use the career matchmaker, explore career options and create your own portfolio. To log on, ask the career practitioner for the username and password. - Career Clusters Interest Survey
This tool allows you to respond to questions and identify the top 3 career clusters of interest. This pencil/paper survey will take about 15 minutes to complete when finished go to the "16 Career Clusters" at the top of this web page to learn more about the clusters that interest you.
Skills & Abilities
- Employability Skills 2000+
This is a short inventory to assess your employability skills. We all need employability skills to get employed and advance in our jobs.
Personality
- Type Focus
This is a personality type assessment that will result in a list of occupations that will potentially fit with your personality type.
Explore Occupations
The web sites below will help you to research career options including responsibilities, education requirements, salary and related occupations.
Job Search
Interviews
Applications
Labour Market Information
The following websites provide information about the labour market:
Job Boards
Education Options
For very specific technical needs, choosing a school may be easy. There might be only two or three places that teach a particular skill. For more common trades or for a liberal arts education, the choice can be overwhelming. While there are no real rules about how to choose a school and a program, the following are general guidelines that can help make the process easier:
- Determine what type of school you are looking for: university, college, vocational school or institute
- Determine what type of program you would like to take or what specific skills you need to acquire
- Obtain course calendars from the schools that you are interested in and visit their Web sites
Consider some of the following criteria:
- Location
- Size of school and classes
- Reputation of school and job placement rate of graduates
- Opportunities for cooperative programs (i.e., programs that combine work and study experience)
- Fees and financial aid options (e.g., scholarships, grants)
- Admissions requirements
- Quality of facilities and resources (e.g., libraries, technical equipment)
- Faculty, staff
- Ability to accommodate special needs (e.g., access to adaptive technology for visually impaired students)
- Recreational and other activities (e.g., sports, clubs, school newspaper)
Like any other product or service, it is important to be a smart consumer when choosing the institution where you take your courses. Here are some web sites that you can use to research your education options:
Planning for Post-Secondary
Post-Secondary Institutions
Calgary
Alberta
British Columbia
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
Ontario
Quebec
New Brunswick
Newfoundland
Prince Edward Island
Nova Scotia
Get your supporting material ready
- Official high school transcripts are ONLY issued by the province of Alberta.
- myPass must be used to order official transcripts.
- Unofficial transcripts are available through Student Services.
Setting Up a myPass Account
With your Alberta Student Number (ASN) you are now ready to create a myPass account. You can find your ASN on CBE report cards from previous years, and in PowerSchool.
Applying to a Post Secondary Institution
Once you have chosen the schools you wish to apply to, you need to do 2 things:
- Figure out how to apply
- Alberta schools – nearly all post secondary schools (and certainly all of the universities) use Apply Alberta
- Ontario and British Columbia schools – both of these provinces have similar online postsecondary application services for universities and other institutions.
- Other schools in Canada and international. Apply directly
- Find the money to pay for it.
Applying Outside of Canada
If applying to post-secondary institutions outside of Canada, please contact the institution directly to be connected to an advisor. Your Guidance Counsellor will be more than happy to assist with The Common Application.
Applying For Residence
Apply for residence early. Many universities guarantee residence for first year students. Many universities offer different levels of meals plans while living in residence.
Financing Your Education
Sources of money:
- Personal resources (includes family)
Not much to say about this, but I do want to point out that the ability to make money after two years of post-secondary can be highly beneficial. Similarly, if you can alternate periods of earnings and periods of study you can significantly reduce your need for loans. - Loans – Student loans
- Scholarships, grants, bursaries
- Entrance awards – Check for them at the schools you’re considering
- Scholarships – ditto
- Make sure you’ve thoroughly completed your profile in Yconic and Scholarships Canada
