Major and Career Exploration
When attending UW-Superior, you’re expected to explore the many possibilities of your future. To help discover those prospects, it is important to regularly practice reflection, self-assessment, and research career paths with diligence. With a strong sense of self-understanding and knowledge about the world of work, you’ll be able to advance in a field of your selection.
Career Services can help you:
- Understand your strengths and how they relate to academic and career fields.
- Compare majors and career paths to find something that fits your strengths and interests.
- Strategize which skills and steps are needed to journey toward your next destination.
- Prepare for your next destination during your college experience and beyond.
If you’d rather explore on your own, we’ve created a consideration guide that walks you through factors you’ll want to keep in mind as you explore.
Career Assessments
Your career development is a lifelong journey; engaging in regular research and reflection will prove to be valuable as you move through life. With so many possibilities, it’s easy to get a little lost while exploring. To confidently chart your course, we encourage you to get familiar with the following assessment tools and adopt a reflective mindset.
Focus 2 Career is an intuitive career planning website with a multitude of reliable assessments relating to your major and
career development journey. Customized with UW-Superior majors, Focus 2 helps you accurately determine what you
may identify with professionally and provides tailored career path suggestions and information.
Get Started:
- Visit the Focus 2 Website
- Login or click ‘Register’
- Use access code: buzz
- Register with your UW-Superior email address
The 16 Personalities Assessment serves as a free supplemental resource to discover career preferences, career values and leadership styles.
UW-Superior Career Services team created a worksheet to identify your work values. Fill out the worksheet to illuminate some of your non-negotiables when it comes to a potential work environment or profession.
Exploring Majors
Investigate academic majors, minors, concentrations and programs at UW-Superior aligning with and leading to your ideal career.
Buzz Tip: Ask other students what they like/dislike about their major.
What Can I Do with This Major?
- ‘What Can I Do With This Major?’ features nearly 100 major profiles with information on common career paths, types of employers that hire in the field, and strategies to maximize opportunities.
- Each major guide outlines common career areas, typical employers hiring within the field, and strategies designed to maximize career opportunities. The information is representative of typical career paths associated with each major.
- At the end of each guide, links are provided to industry websites, professional associations, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, and employment opportunities in the field to aid you in further career research.
- PDFs of each major guide are available by clicking “Print Version” under the major heading. Save printing credits by requesting copies at the Link Center.
Academic advising supports students throughout their educational journey: assist in selecting a major, registering for classes, and guide students in their academic direction.
Exploring Careers
Looking for a career direction to point north? Let this section be a compass and set your curiosity free by uncovering options and creating informed decisions for your future career path.
Combined with insights gained through a self-assessment and major-related investigation, the following resources can help you gather information on occupations, industries, fields, and employers that match your goals.
Buzz Tip: Speak with a department advisor, mentor, or professional working in a field that interests you.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics – Occupational Outlook
- Field of degree (FOD) pages highlight data and information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau for a variety of academic fields and provide a glimpse of what grads are doing with their degrees.
- Research the growth rate and national income averages of many occupations or your field of interest.
- Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration, O*NET Online is the nation’s primary source of valid occupation data.
- Become is packed with career resources, a get-hired toolkit, and information on almost any career you can imagine!
- Job Shadow is a virtual job shadow site that provides access to interviews from people relating to their careers and jobs. They focus on each person’s individual thoughts and experiences within their given job or profession.
- What do you want to do for a living? With My Next Move, browse over 900 career options or answer questions about the type of work you might enjoy.
- View suggestions of careers that match your interests and training!
- Are you a vet? Visit My Next Move for Veterans to get help finding a civilian career similar to your military job.
Graduate School
Expanding an academic journey into graduate school is exciting, and has many complex decisions to consider.
Deciding
To pursue the right school and graduate program, consider the topics below. We also encourage you to check out our consideration guide that walks you through things to think about in your exploration.
- Graduate Program and Institution:
- General: consider the basics such as location, admissions process, attrition, etc.
- Faculty: research your future mentors; review publications, diversity statements, and more.
- Financial Aid: there are a multitude of resources that can help make graduate school more affordable: loans, grants, scholarships, fellowships, assistantships and tuition reimbursement opportunities.
- Federal Student Aid for Graduate or Professional Students
- UW-Superior Financial Aid
- Expected Salary and Workforce Availability:
Testing
Graduate schools often require applicants to take exams as part of the application process. Common exams include:
Applying
When applying to graduate school, it is imperative to be well prepared. We’ve created an applications process timeline to help you get ready. Here are some items you’ll need to apply to graduate school:
- Curriculum Vitae (CV): professional document including areas of academic interest, grants received, publications and presentations, research projects and your references. A CV is similar to a resume—we’ve put together a guide that outlines the differences.
- Personal Statement: programs want insight into your academics, research and career goals, beyond what test scores and transcripts can show. This is your opportunity to write an authentic statement emphasizing your transferrable strengths, abilities and experiences with relevant examples to show what sets you apart from other applicants. The UW-Superior Writing Center is a great resource to help you avoid spelling, grammatical and structural missteps. We’ve also put together a guide on writing a personal statement.
- General Guidelines:
- Follow application directions: most programs will give you a word count limit and tell you exactly how they want the essay formatted and structured. Some may include questions you will respond to within your statement. If there are no specifications, limit yourself to two pages and write about the most vital aspects of your academic experiences and qualifications.
- Research: visit the institution and program website to find information about faculty and their research, the courses offered, current student support and professional development activities. This can help you get a better understanding of the program objectives, what they may look for in a potential student, and whether the program is a good fit for you.
- Be specific: provide detailed examples of relevant experiences that prepared you for graduate school. Outline specific, transferrable skills you gained from the experiences. Recall brief anecdotes to strengthen your claims. Your examples should discuss your interest and knowledge specific to the program you are applying for. Describe the types of topics and areas you wish to study, including any specific research questions you have or research you wish to pursue in graduate school.
- Authenticity: illustrate a unique angle or story to capture your reader’s attention. If your statement is fresh and memorable, this helps distinguish you from the crowd of applicants. Ensure your angle is an original view and not too clichéd.
- Revisions: proofread, proofread, proofread! Take your personal statement to the Writing Center to ensure your essay is free of spelling or grammatical errors.
Schedule a meeting with a Career Development Manager at any point throughout your voyage via Handshake.