I've heard that career tests may help me be able to decide my major if it comes down to that. How helpful are they, and which ones would you reccomend?
Did you look into a dual enrollment class? The one I took gave no-cost-to-me access to all these assessments. Definitely contact your counselor at your high school and ask if the school subscribes to any career assessment services. Once you go to college or are part of a community college for dual enrollment during high school, that's another counseling office for you to contact for no-cost-to-you career services.
What I did was take this class: https://webschedule.smccd.edu/course/202103/40889 . It was free to me through dual enrollment and I bet your local community college has something similar. The school has a subscription to this site: https://roadtripnation.com/edu/ . I explored that site and followed the "roadmap to careers" prompts. I took and received interpretations of my Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Strong Interest Inventory (SII) Career Assessments results. Then I used https://eureka.org/ . I completed the Inner Heroes Assessment on eureka.org. Then completed the Values Driven assessment on eureka.org. Next, I completed the True Colors Assessment on eureka.org. And lastly, completed the MicroSkills Assessment on eureka.org. We also did "family trees" where we listed the known education and employment history of our families. Then I had to interview/job shadow someone in a career I was considering. Then I had to take everything that I learned about myself and my strengths and interests over the semester and write out my college major and career plan. I had to identify my next steps in reaching my goals as well as differentiate goals I'd already had from new goals I'd come across. In the end, I make a LinkedIn account and put it all together to describe what the professor called "superpowers."
I don't know that there was one assessment I found more important than others. Maybe the Strong Interest assessment, because it changed my results the most. I only had results for low-paying careers, like Etsy craft artist, with Myers Briggs. But the Holland Code for my Strong Interest Inventory was AIE. That helped me identify cryptanalysis as a career option and decide to major in mathematics.
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Most tests I'm able to find with certified processes are fairly pricey, or I have to purchase a subscription. Do you guys know of any free tests?