Connect Students to Career Possibilities

Data from the SAT Suite of Assessments allows students to explore careers matched to their skills and interests.

What we Did

College Board has created a way to make the SAT Suite of Assessments (SAT, PSAT/NMSQT, PSAT 10, and the PSAT 8/9) even more useful to students through the development of a data-driven “matchmaking” algorithm that allows for personalized career exploration matched to a student’s academic skills and interests.

How it Works

Insight into Hundreds of Jobs

We worked with researchers at HumRRO to map SAT Suite scores to the occupational descriptors of jobs, using the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) database.

Covering the entire U.S. economy, O*NET is the nation’s primary source of up-to-date occupational information, including each occupation’s knowledge, skill, and ability (KSA) descriptor.

Mapping SAT Data to Occupational KSAs

Industrial organizational psychologists identified which KSAs were related to SAT Suite Reading, Writing, and Math sections and retained only those KSAs that were strongly related to what an assessment measures. This ensures that each KSA tied to an assessment is distinct, in order to provide a more meaningful matching experience for students.

Then they evaluated the importance of each KSA to success in a specific job, and the minimum academic skills needed for it. Finally, they mapped assessment score levels onto O*NET KSA level ratings to create a brand-new algorithm that connects scores with occupational skill readiness.

Benefits to Students

With an SAT Suite score, students are able to identify jobs that may be a good fit based on how their assessment performance aligns to the quantitative and literacy specifications of a career.

For students who already aspire to a certain occupation, they can create a road map for skills to improve and get recommendations on classes to take in both high school and college.