Life is about drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient information.  How are we supposed to know the best way to invest our educational years? How is someone supposed to select a major and career and, potentially, assume thousands of dollars of educational debt in the process when a person doesn’t even know what they want to be when they grow up?

This is what college advisors help with day after day. Research conducted on focus groups of 21 advisors provide useful insight.

Identify your strengths and then build your life around them. Researchers at the University of Minnesota (Krista M. Soria, et all, NACADA Journal: 2017, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 55-65.) studied over 5,000 students and made the following observations:  

• Students who employ a strengths-based approach experience increased engagement, confidence and sense of belonging
• Post-college, these same students find great benefits in work-life beyond college such as higher job satisfaction, commitment to...

How do you provide students with the right tools to succeed?

Here’s how a panel of students who have applied the strength based student content explain how it has influenced their daily lives, as well as their future career/academic paths. The students interviewed have been part of a community program YPI (Youth Philanthropy Initiative). This program, follows the strength based student curriculum, gives students the opportunity to play a direct role in making a financial grant to a local, grassroots social service organization in their own community.  To highlight a few of the topics covered in these classes are:

• Student orientation
• Career development
• Internship and interview preparation
• Graduate school planning
• Leadership development

Based on the students experiences with this material, we asked them: What might lead to someone being a strength based student?  Here are four students individual responses.

Nathan graduated from High School in 2014 and just...