ACT Advantage DISCOVER

DISCOVER is a program designed to help student develop a comprehensive career plan.  Following are the steps the student uses to build his personalized career portfolio.

1)LEARN ABOUT YOURSELF AND OCCUPATIONS

The student first takes three inventory tests: Interest Inventory, Values Inventory, and an Abilities Inventory. An Inventories Summary then shows how your strengths relate to careers.

2)EXPLORE OCCUPATIONS AND TRAINING REQUIRED

Once you know your potential occupations, you can explore each of them further. This exploration section give you a lot of data.

• Occupation summary
• Characteristics of the occupation:
     Setting
     Amount of travel required
     Variety
     Working with people
     Schedule options
     Physical demands
• Work tasks
• Related occupations: Civilian and military
• Training needed
     English skills needed
     Reading skills needed
     Science skills needed
• Personal qualities desired
• Salary and Outlook
• What workers say they like and dislike
• Where to obtain more information

3)EXPLORE MAJORS

Your exploration of careers gives you possible majors to explore. You can look for majors by name and by occupation. This section also gives you a lot of information.

• General Information
• Characteristics associated with success
• Courses included
• Schools
• Related occupations
• Related majors

4)EXPLORE SCHOOLS

Once you have learned more about your possible majors, it is time to explore the schools that have those majors. You can search for schools by state, by major, by degree type, by school type, or by name. You can learn a lot about a potential school.

• General information such as type of school, contact information, federal school code, accreditation and level of students admitted.
• Majors
• Cost
• Admission Requirements
• Services such as academic services provided and ROTC.
• Student body statistics
• Financial Aid
• Housing available
• Extracurricular Activities
• Campus Facilities
• Sports

 5)EXPLORE SCHOLARSHIPS / AID

One thing you will see when exploring schools is that it can be expensive to attend a college or university. So knowing your options for financial aid is important. DISCOVER provides information on financial aid programs and finding scholarships. It also provides a Financial Need Estimator.

6)JOB SEARCH TOOLS

DISCOVER also provides instruction on job searching.

• Resume Writing
• Preparing a Cover Letter
• Interview Preparation
• Finding a Job

All these parts are stored in a personalized career portfolio that can be viewed or printed at any point. 

DISCOVER can be purchased with a three-month license for $19.95 and a six-month license for $24.95. ACT Advantage also has assessment programs called EXPLORE (8TH Grade) AND PLAN (10TH Grade) which I will be reviewing later. Also available is an ACT Test Prep program.

My 14 year old daughter found the website informative and very easy to use. Read here to see how others families utilized the ACT Advantage programs.

Disclosure:This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. No further compensation was received. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are my own.