Choose a major and a school that fit how you're actually wired.
Most career quizzes ask you what you like. The Highlands Ability Battery measures what you can do — objectively, in 3.5 hours of timed work samples. Then we sit down for two hours and talk about what that means for college lists, majors, and the next few years of your life.
The free quiz problem
Career quizzes built for teenagers ask you what you like. "Do you prefer working with people or with numbers?" That tells you something about your preferences — but it tells you nothing about whether your brain processes patterns the way an engineer's does, or whether you can hold visual designs in working memory the way a surgeon needs to.
The Highlands Ability Battery measures the things that don't show up in your GPA. It's three and a half hours of timed work samples. The result is something a quiz can't give you: a real picture of your wiring.
Where it changes a college decision
We've seen students who were sure they wanted to major in psychology and turned out to have profiles that pointed at architecture. We've seen students convinced they should follow a parent into law whose abilities suggested a research career instead. The point isn't that the Highlands picks your major — you pick your major. The point is you make the decision with more information than the brochure gave you.
- ·Junior year: pre-college, before you finalize your list
- ·Senior year: choosing between admissions offers
- ·Transfer applicant: figuring out whether to switch schools or majors
- ·Considering a gap year: deciding what to do with it