Finding your purpose often starts with finding your strengths, passions, skills, values, and more. Identifying these aspects is so important because they can have a substantial positive impact on the trajectory of your life. After all, one of the great joys of life is to find what you love and excel at so that you can spend your life doing it. Not only is it mentally and spiritually rewarding, it’s also financially rewarding.
For this kind of research, we often recommend the Kolbe Corporation, which specializes in an assessment that measures how people take action. In other words, when you have a task to do, how do you approach that task? Generally, the Kolbe A Index is a great place to start for any adult (the A stands for adult), although there are a few other iterations of the Kolbe Index. There’s no pass or fail, and there’s no right or wrong. Instead, your Kolbe profile reveals a unique number that helps you unlock your personal skills when getting results. This information can help you become more efficient, confident, and empowered to make choices about your work. And now, they’ve released a Student Aptitude Quiz for teenagers and young adults who want to apply this information for greater success in school and college.
The Kolbe Background
Kolbe Corp was founded by Kathy Kolbe, who began her journey when seeking to understand what drives “human performance.” In other words, what happens when people are striving toward a goal, and what makes that different from person to person? That’s what led Kathy to develop Index A, which is a conative assessment—it assesses your instinctive strengths when you’re doing something, rather than your cognitive strengths. In other words, Kolbe assessments don’t measure your personality or your IQ, just how you problem-solve.
The Student Aptitude Quiz, Kolbe’s latest assessment, is fine-tuned to help high-school and even early-college-aged kids step into their confidence. It reveals strengths in four different categories. The information can be a critical piece in helping your kids feel confident in the unique way they approach quizzes, homework assignments, interviews, and much more.
Why Should You Find Your Strengths?
The reason Kolbe is so powerful is that it completely validates how each person uniquely approaches tasks. We all have different instincts when it comes to completing tasks. However, systems like schools tend to push people into very rigid ways of accomplishing tasks. For many people, this can be disorienting or draining if that way doesn’t align with their instincts. And this can lead people down a path of decreased efficiency and confidence because they’re still trying to fit inside the box. Kolbe breaks the box wide open and empowers people to approach tasks in ways that are unique to them.
Having this information can be immensely valuable for young students who are learning to be more independent and striving for success. When you know your strengths, at any age, you are better positioned to communicate them to others and apply them for better results. This can be a tremendous boon to students as they navigate school, giving them the tools they need to get creative within the scope of school assignments (and beyond).
Ultimately, honing these skills can lead to increased confidence, better working relationships, improved grades, improved energy, and more. For students considering college, the Student Aptitude Quiz can help them feel more comfortable identifying what they want from a college experience, what alternatives might suit them, or what features are desirable in a school.
College planning is already a tough task (especially from a financial standpoint). On top of it being a huge decision, it’s also not the ONLY decision. Students who have a good sense of self will pinpoint systems and institutions that might not serve them. That includes deciding whether there might be a better option than college for them. There are so many things to consider, and the more a student knows themself, the better equipped they are to make a wise choice for their future.
Busting the College Planning Lies
Do you have young kids, or are maybe approaching college yourself? We’d like to share the latest Prosperity Economics book with you: Busting the College Planning Lies. Written by Kim Butler and E.P. Hagenlocher, this book explores the true cost of college, the most effective ways to finance college, alternatives to the 4-year degree, and how to factor strengths and passions into the decision.
The Kolbe Student Aptitude Quiz is an exceptional tool to use to help young kids learn more about themselves so they can be their best selves. And Busting the College Planning Lies can be your resource for following those passions. To be connected with a Prosperity Economics Advisor, please contact us here.
