Readers of the NC3T newsletter are already aware that we have a close working relationship with YouScience, a company that offers student assessments as well as certifications. They released a fascinating report recently that deserves some attention.

YouScience’s assessments cover both student aptitudes and student interests; this is important because interests can be influenced by many things, ranging from career exposure to social media trends, and may not represent a good fit for young people. By assessing student aptitudes as well as interests, the company is able to point students towards careers in which they may excel, which often includes career fields with which the students were unfamiliar as well as fields they may not have considered previously.

Recently, they gathered data from close to 300,000 student assessments and did an analysis to see how closely aptitudes and interests aligned; as can be seen in “State of the Future US Workforce: Student Ability Report,” the answer is “not very closely.” You can see the report by visiting this page and either downloading a summary or registering for the complete report.

What they found is that many students have strong aptitudes for certain career areas, but due to various factors, never considered or explored them. Some key examples:

• Students have more than 2x the aptitude for computer technology careers than interest.
• Students have more than 3x the aptitude for advanced manufacturing careers than interest.
• Students have almost 2x the aptitude for health science careers than interest.

On the flip side, there are careers in which students have a great deal more interest than aptitude:

• Students have 1.4x the interest in arts and media careers than aptitude.
• Students have 3.2x the interest in human services careers than aptitude.
• Students have 3.9x the interest in law and public safety careers than aptitude.

Breakdowns by gender are even more stark:

• Female students have almost 4x the aptitude for computer technology careers than interest.
• Female students have almost 10x the aptitude for advanced manufacturing careers than interest while males have 2x the aptitude than interest.
• Male students have 2x the aptitude for health science careers than interest.

The fact that there are such gaps between aptitudes and interests represents a great opportunity: If we can identify students’ aptitudes and use those to inform their career exploration strategies we’ll do much better at helping them find a great occupational fit than if we limit our focus to their interests based on incomplete exposure. I would encourage everyone to look at ways to collect information on student aptitudes (including YouScience’s Discovery tool) so they can better inform student activities.

Brett Pawlowski is Executive Vice President of the National Center for College and Career Transitions (NC3T). NC3T provides planning, coaching, technical assistance, and tools. These strategies help community-based leadership teams plan and implement their college-career pathway systems and strengthen employer connections with education. Discover more at www.nc3t.com.