Steps for Choosing Your Education
The first choice that guides your career is made during the joint application period in the spring of your ninth school year. You should gather information about the following topics in order to build a foundation for your decision:
1. Me
- What things are important to me?
- What are my strengths?
- How do I learn best?
2. Occupations
- Collect experiences and information about different kinds of occupations
- Define attributes that would describe a work task that would suit you
- Collect occupation options that match those attributes
- Get more information about the occupations you chose (working conditions, pay, education)
3. Education
- Get acquainted with the Finnish education system
- Get acquainted with the various fields of education
- Pick a field or two that interest you the most
- Find information about occupations within that field or fields
4. Your own academic performance
- Calculate your grade point average
- Check the selection criteria for vocational education and general upper secondary education (e.g. here and here in Finnish)
5. Connecting the dots
- Connect your strengths to a postgraduate education option
- Connect the postgraduate education option to your target occupation
- Connect your school performance to the postgraduate education option
- Compare your current school performance to the studying style of the postgraduate education options (reading–doing)
- Choose a way of studying to which you are ready to commit for the next three years
6. Narrowing down the options
- Gather the possible postgraduate options
- Weigh up the pros and cons of the postgraduate education options
- Define the options where you have a possibility to be admitted to
7. Choosing the primary alternative and applying
- Define the selection criteria for your primary alternative
- Find out which postgraduate education options you will probably get into
- Choose your primary alternative
- List the other alternatives in order of importance so that among them are postgraduate education options you are likely to get into
- Test the trial joint application process
- Apply in the joint application process
Additional information
Occupational barometer
Useful links
- Studyinfo.fi
- www.mol.fi/avo (application to help you choose an occupation, in Finnish)
- www.ammattinetti.fi (in Finnish)
- Young Professional
- www.kunkoululoppuu.fi (in Finnish)
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