Career/Major Exploration
Career Technical Education
Career Technical Education or CTE is heavily rooted in the trades and vocational education, supporting students in their post high school preparation. CTE is a point of pride at NJUHSD and within the community. For a district our size, we offer remarkable pathway diversity with over 50 course offerings in eight different industry sectors:
Agriculture & Natural Resources ◈ Arts, Media, & Entertainment ◈ Building & Construction Trades
Health Science & Medical Technology ◈ Hospitality, Tourism, & Recreation
Information & Communication Technologies ◈ Manufacturing & Product Development ◈ Transportation
Explore Career Options
After you explore career interests and options, you’re able to match those results to related majors and ultimately to the colleges/programs that offer the education needed to pursue your chosen field.
Road Trip Nation
Explore your path with Road Trip Nation.
How can you be successful in school and your job and your life? It can feel overwhelming, but you’re not alone. We’re here to help, with stories of people who overcame challenges and defined success for themselves.
Feeling stuck? This three-step process will help you move forward. Road Trip Nation.
Let go, define, become: These three steps form an evergreen process that will help you identify the things you like, then build a fulfilling career—and life!—around your interests.
PODCAST: RoadMap: Finding your Path With RoadTrip Nation
ROADMAP: Quick 3 step career exploration (what interests you and what lights you up) that tailors the RoadTrip Nation source for you. https://roadtripnation.com/roadmap
Explore within California
California Career Zone offers a clear path for students ready to investigate their post secondary options.
There are 3 simple steps: Explore, Decide, Grow.
Salary Surfer reports an estimate of wages 2 and 5 years after completing a degree/certificate program. This tool also provides information on which colleges offer programs in those specific disciplines.
Over 92 Videos -- all interest areas represented (2 minutes per video) View on Salary Surfer Site or YouTube
Explore Sierra College!
Sierra's Career Coach - We'll help you find out what your interests are and how they relate to the world of work. Quick assessment HERE
More Career Resources
My Next Move - US Department of Labor - Sort by Bright Outlook, Interests, and Job Prep
ONet Interest Profiler within My Next Move
Explore Health Careers - ExploreHealthCareers.org is a collaboration between today’s health professionals and leading health care associations designed to help people like you start down the road toward a career in health.
Explore College Majors
College Data not only connects you to informational major resources but helps you develop your college major search strategy too. The site’s home page offers a step-by-step guide from exploring your ideas for college to becoming a college graduate. Finding your ideal major may be as simple as tweaking your search process. The site also offers a neat feature called “Major Mythology” to keep you protected from all the false information surrounding different majors.
College Majors 101 allows you to navigate majors based on category and insightfully fills you in on both the major and associated career field(s). After selecting a major to explore, the site automatically connects you to the college profiles offering the major. The profile allows you to explore professional associations with the major, links to industry publications in the major’s field, and even a networking platform with future employers to explore potential recruitment.
Determining your college major requires more than just subject interest: it can determine which college you’ll attend, what type of GPA you’ll have to maintain, and other factors that need to be pre-determined to fit your experience in the major. Unfortunately every major isn’t offered at every college, so requirements aren’t universal, but Campus Explorer does a great job helping you determine what you need to know. Its detailed search engine provides easy access to narrow down those factors.
If you’re looking for a more psychological approach to choosing your ideal major, look no further than College Factual. The site is a personalized service to explore your personality traits and evaluate which career field(s) those traits perform best in. The site explores varying personality types and connects you with the site’s Major Matcher engine to view what majors align with your interests and natural abilities. Sometimes your college major determines your lifelong career path, so it’s safe to assume your talent and abilities are prioritized in making the final decision.
The Princeton Review offers a search engine to help students explore types of majors by category, academic departments, and colleges that offer them nationwide. The site provides tuition costs, admission guidelines, and acceptance rates at each college so you can navigate the pros and cons of entering a major by location. It also offers resources on statistics regarding certain majors, breakdowns of different types of majors and minors, and expert advice on the varying admission processes of different majors.
Get Focused, Stay Focused
Beginning with the class of 2023 (and some within the class of 2022 who were in the pilot group), NJUHSD is proud to have all students creating a skills-based 10-year education and career plan in the freshman Career Choices course.
Students answer the questions: Who am I? What do I want? How do I get it?
Within "My 10 Year Plan", we ask students to Get Focused (interests connecting to skills connecting to a post secondary plan). We will continue to revisit this plan as students Stay Focused.
