Overview
Career Aptitude Testing for High School and College Students
For parents who want to help their student choose a better-fit major, college path, and career.
The Oxford Career Testing Program combines natural ability testing, personal style, and interests to help high school and college students identify careers and college majors that fit. Using research-based assessments and our unique Triangulation Method, the program provides an objective picture of each student’s natural talents, career potential, and educational options.
Do you wonder…?
What work roles and fields do my talents fit best with? What college major should I choose? How do I learn best? What is the best college/study environment for me? How do I solve problems and make decisions most easily? How shall I plan my classroom, study and homework schedules?
Our testing program…
- Uncovers your natural, inborn talents
- Pinpoints your ideal career path
- Builds your self-confidence
- Can offer you a strategic advantage in landing your top college choice
- Can provide a sense of purpose behind your academic, career, and life ambitions
- Identifies occupational pitfalls to avoid
- We seek to discover your innate, natural abilities and use the information to determine what career paths you should follow for satisfaction, what occupational pitfalls to avoid, what college majors to study, what sort of schools to attend, or what hobbies to be considered.
Who is it for?
- High school and college students who want to understand the type of work they were born to do and develop a powerful vision for what they want to achieve through college and in life.
- We measure your talents, interests and personal style: the areas where you would do your best and be most happy. This testing program is completely different from the ineffective career tests you may have taken previously. Most career tests are based on your personality or interests and you can sway them with your choices. And just because you are interested in something doesn’t mean you have any talent for it.
- Some people hesitate to take our tests because they might “fail.” It is impossible to pass or fail our program. In many cases, a low score on a particular test may be preferable to a high score. Satisfaction in a job depends not on how many aptitudes you possess but on the combination of high and low scores, and whether that aptitude pattern is used in your work.
The student completes the testing and materials from the comfort of their own home. No travel needed!
View the Sample Reports
These reports comprise the complete package of reports for our testing program.
How the Oxford Career Testing Program Works
STEP 1: TESTING
PART 1: Personal Style Assessment. You will begin with an intake questionnaire designed to identify your interests, preferences, and goals related to careers and education.
PART 2: The Highlands Ability Battery. The Highlands Ability Battery measures natural abilities through a series of timed work samples. Unlike an interest or personality questionnaire, these exercises measure how you naturally perform different types of tasks.
The results help identify patterns in your abilities that can be useful when evaluating careers, college majors, learning environments, and potential areas of specialization. After completing the Battery, you will receive a detailed report explaining your results.
PART 3: Interests and Personality Analysis. You will also complete assessments of your interests and personality. These results help identify fields and work environments that may be satisfying and motivating for you.
Rather than relying on a single career test, the Oxford Program combines information about your natural abilities, interests, and personal style to develop a more complete picture of potential career and educational directions.
STEP 2: CAREER MATCHING
After testing is complete, we analyze your results using the Oxford Program’s Triangulation Method. Your natural abilities, interests, and personal style are compared to identify patterns and develop career and college-major recommendations that fit your individual strengths.
STEP 3: RESULTS AND COUNSELING
After testing is complete, you will receive your Oxford Program report along with a recorded interpretation explaining your results. Follow-up counseling gives you an opportunity to discuss your findings, career options, college majors, and questions about your next steps.
The Highlands Ability Battery
Discover Your Natural Abilities and Career Strengths
The Highlands Ability Battery is a career aptitude assessment designed to identify your natural abilities. Through a series of timed work samples, it measures how you naturally perform different types of tasks rather than asking what you like or how you describe yourself. Understanding these abilities can help students evaluate careers, college majors, and educational paths that fit their individual strengths.
The Highlands Ability Battery consists of 19 timed work samples designed to measure a range of natural abilities. Each work sample evaluates how easily and efficiently an individual performs a particular type of task.
The results are presented in an individual ability profile. Rather than looking at each score in isolation, the Oxford Program examines patterns and combinations of abilities to better understand the types of work, problem-solving, learning, and environments that may be a natural fit.
This information adds an important dimension to career planning because abilities are different from interests and personality. A student may be interested in a career, for example, while having natural strengths that suggest particular roles or specialties within that field.
More than any other test, it helps you understand the type(s) of work you should pursue and the types you should definitely not pursue.
32 students at Colorado State University were asked to compare a number of assessments which they had completed as part of their course.
The group was asked to rate 4 different well-known assessments in terms of effectiveness in measuring their abilities and talents, as well as in guiding them in future career decisions. The assessments were the Highlands Ability Battery, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Strong Interest and Skills Confidence Inventory, and True Colors.
Percentage of Students that ranked it #1 in measuring abilities and talents
Percentage of Students that ranked it #1 in effectiveness in guiding them in career decisions
How Reliable Is the Highlands Ability Battery?
This is not like the aptitude testing from years ago, or the tests available in certain books out there. The information and suggestions that it makes are HIGHLY ACCURATE. Many medical, technology, business, and science students use this aptitude testing to choose an area of specialization. Businesses use it to choose the top candidates for important positions. Entrepreneurs use it to determine the type of business they’re most likely to be successful in. The testing is psychometrically valid and reliable. The minimum reliability standard for the 19 tests that make up The Highlands Ability Battery™ is r = . 80.
The Highlands Ability Battery is designed to provide an objective measure of natural abilities through performance-based work samples. Unlike interest or personality assessments, which rely largely on how individuals describe themselves, the Battery asks participants to complete specific tasks and measures their performance.
The individual work samples have been developed using established principles of psychometric assessment, including reliability and validity. The Highlands approach also has roots in decades of research into human abilities and individual differences.
No career assessment should be used by itself to tell a student what career to choose. That is why the Oxford Career Testing Program combines Highlands Ability Battery results with interests, personal style, and individual goals. We then examine how those different sources of information fit together to develop career and educational recommendations.
“Our experience has been that a great deal of dissatisfaction at work can be traced to having strong talents that you never use.“
– Bob McDonald, Ph.D.
“Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong.“
– Peter F. Drucker, Renowned author and speaker on management and leadershi
Why Abilities? Why Should They Be Tested?
Natural abilities are an important part of finding the right career fit.
Interests tell us what attracts you. Personality helps describe how you tend to approach people, situations, and decisions. Abilities add another important piece: the types of tasks that may come more naturally to you.
Abilities are different from learned skills. A skill can be developed through education, practice, and experience. Natural abilities reflect underlying patterns in how a person approaches and performs different kinds of tasks.
Understanding these patterns can be especially valuable for students who are choosing a college major or exploring careers for the first time. A student may be interested in several very different careers, but ability testing can provide additional information for comparing those options and identifying roles that make better use of their strengths.
The Oxford Career Testing Program does not use abilities in isolation. We compare ability results with the student’s interests, personal style, goals, and preferences. Looking for agreement among these different sources of information is a key part of our Triangulation Method.
The goal is not to tell a student what they must do. It is to give them better information for making informed decisions about careers, college majors, and educational paths.
Testimonials
“I would definitely recommend the Oxford Program to anybody struggling to find some direction in their life. It provided me with a list of my strong attributes and medical career options that will satisfy me physically, socially and intellectually.” – Sam Turpinski
“I was so excited when I read the report and your interpretation. I’m excited that some of the things I am thinking about seem like they’d be a good match. I’m more excited about what I can and will accomplish in this field.” – Candace Levi
“I’ve taken about every psych test you can, and this was the most accurate resulting as well as the more usable test I’ve found from my results. Interestingly, I’ve reviewed my results with friends who know me well and they all were in 100% agreement with what my results said about me.” – Vanessa Simms
“Dear Steve,
I want to briefly update you on our daughter. In her first few months of college, she had been a math major and then changed to chemistry. Neither seemed a match. That led us to you and the Oxford Program in November.
After taking the Highlands Ability Battery and having it explained by your consultant, she learned things about herself that she had never been able to put together. In addition, she was able to ask questions about multiple fields of study, including one she knew little about. The consultant was able from the test to demonstrate how her aptitude and personal style fit that particular field of study perhaps better than any of the four or five she was considering.
Well, at mid-semester, she changed majors again. Now, a year and a half later, she has earned a 4.0 and been awarded numerous scholarships and other awards. After recently offering her a scholarship for this coming year, one department leader told me that they were “Sorry they could only give her (an amount equaling 40% of her total expenses for the year). We wished we could give her a free ride.”
Her mom and I believe that the HAB and your company’s interpretation made a huge difference in helping her pursue these studies in such a successful way, and in the process saved much money that might have been spent investigating who knows how many other majors! Thanks very much!” – A Father in Virginia
Ready to Help Your Student Find the Right Career Direction?
The Oxford Career Testing Program helps students move beyond guessing about their future. By combining natural abilities, interests, personal style, and individual goals, the program provides a clearer foundation for choosing careers, college majors, and educational paths.
Whether your student has no idea what direction to pursue or is trying to choose among several options, the goal is the same: make a more informed decision before investing years of time and thousands of dollars in the wrong direction.