Making a Plan for after High School

Jennifer Bento: Okay, let's get started. Welcome, and thank you for joining today's webinar, Making a Plan for After High School. As part of our summer series, The Time is Now,

my name is Jennifer Bento Pinion. I'm here at MIFA on the college planning team as director of MIFA Pathway. And just a couple of logistics before we get started, um, on our presentation. Uh, the audio settings, uh, allow you to control the volume, of course. Uh, you can, um, we have disabled the chat, so if you have any questions as we go along, just pop those in the QA.

And we will address those at the end. If you would like to use the live transcript feature and like to see the closed captions, you can do so. And you can also select the language of your choice. And then you're always welcome to leave. We hope you don't, but leave the webinar. We are recording this webinar so you can always listen at a later date.

All right. A little bit about MIFA. MIFA is a state authority created over 40 years ago to help families in Massachusetts plan, save, and pay for college. So as an extension of all we do at MIFA, MIFA Pathway is a college and career planning online platform. It's available for students in Massachusetts in grades 6 through 12 and also recent graduates.

So today, during our session here will be focusing on a few of the tools that are available in MIFA pathway, but there is a lot to offer within the platform. So we always encourage you to come back. We're going to go through that registration process. And so we always hope you'll come back in and use the use the platform further.

Okay, so let's jump over to going to Go to, um, the website. It's MIFA pathway dot org. And we're going to go into the platform live here in just a couple of minutes. So are you a recent graduate deciding on your plans for the future, or possibly a student in high school developing a plan for after graduation.

So during this webinar, we're going to learn about features within MIFA pathway that can help guide you to determine next steps in building that solid career plan. So whether that's attending a community college or four year university, possibly getting into a trade program, going into the military, so many options are available to you, and it's not too late to build a plan for the fall.

So again, this is me for pathway. org, and I'll just point out before I go through the registration process at up on the right corner. Our site is translatable into the six languages. So, just click on which language you'd like to translate it to and it flips the whole flips the whole website so it's pretty cool.

Alright, so, me for pathway. org. As a first time user, students will click I am a student. And then they will go through the registration process. So very, very easy. First time user click register here, and the students will put in there and I'll just put in some my information here to show you how it, how it works.

So first name, last name, date of birth, city or town your school is in. If you are currently attending school, you can select the town, well either way, if you're currently attending school or not, select the town that you live in. And then if you're currently attending school, you'll see based on the city or town that you put in, there's a list of schools within that district.

Or, if you're a recent graduate, just select other, and then submit. So the registration process will bring you through a second page here. So now some of the information is transferred from the first page your name and your date of birth, you can put in a your, you want to put in your address so let's just pop in my, my address here.

We're going to put the zip code in. Let's see is there 1850. You don't have to add a mobile phone. So you see the city of talent comes over. I'm a recent grad, so I selected other. And then. I say, I'm going to say I graduate, I graduated in 2023. And then you just click register. And then on the subsequent page will create a username, you'll create a password, and you will also input a working email address.

So, the email address you want to make sure that you have access to that email address so you can, if you forget your password you can reset by that email address. You do create two security questions, so suggested that you. Uh, create questions that will not change like, uh, what is my brother's name? What is my sister's name?

So to, to security questions, you can reset your password by that way as well. So either the email or the security questions, if you forget, and then you just click the terms and conditions and you're in, so let me go back to the log, my login page here, cause I have credentials to my account here. So after you create credentials, when you log in subsequently, username, password, and then you log in.

So pretty simple registration process, pretty pretty straightforward. So when you log into your account here, you will see your dashboard. So the dashboard is a great spot to view certain tasks and topics that are relevant to future planning. So some things to consider when you're developing your plan.

You want to think about things that you're excited about. What makes you tick? Maybe some things that you might not be as excited about. You want to think about skills that you have and how you can capitalize on those skills. You want to think about your talents. What are you passionate about? You want to think about things that interest you.

Do you have an interest in helping people? Do you have an interest with working with your hands? Do you like working with numbers? So MIFA Pathway Um, can help determine some of these things in a, in a concrete way. So I'm going to go over to, um, the Discover Careers tab up at the top here. And then from there, I'm going to click on Get to Know Myself.

And on the Get to Know Yourself page, there are three assessments students have access to, all which tie into the Career Search tool. So I'm going to show you how that works. So just Let's look at the what are your interests first. So click on get started, and the student students can come back and retake these assessment tests as many times as they like, it's good to do so they can see what's trending with them, what may have changed.

So, in order to take this interest assessment. Students just click on I'm just going to click on start over here. So there are 30 activities that the student rates from the very sad face to the very happy face. So install software across computers and a large network. Maybe that's something that kind of kind of intrigues me a little bit.

Sell merchandise at a department store. Yeah, I don't know if that really thrills me too much. So I'm not going to go through these, all these 30, but you get the idea. Uh, students, you know, will go through the 30 and then once they do so, they will be brought to a results page. So let me show you what that looks here, looks like.

So once they get to the end, they've rated all of those 30 activities, they get to their results page, and now they can see the rankings. of the personality types based on their ratings to those questions. So you can see that based on my ratings, I, my top is social, second investigative, third enterprising.

So you can get a little summary of each, what each of those means here. And then from here, Students can click on say they want to see related careers to that social result. I just click on that little that little button, and it brings up a short list, really, of maybe careers that they may want to explore further.

So they would just click on a click on a career, and it would bring them I'll show you to a nice. The details page here, all the information on our careers comes from own it. So it's updated on a regular basis. So as you can see I just selected that nurse practice practitioner and it brought me to a details page here projected growth required education level, a lot of information on this particular.

career. So if a student wants to save this career to their list, they can do so here. Just click save. But let's go back to the assessments just to show, continue on with that. So that's the interest assessment. We also have the work values assessment works in a similar manner. Students can, they can, if it's been started, they can start over, but we Encourage students that they complete the assessment.

So this one is just a drag and drop. So they read the value and they say how important that is to them from least to most. So they just click the little plus sign and it, it, um, moves the, the value to that box. So once they complete that and they can move these around too. If they like, Oh, I want to move those around a little bit.

They can do so. Once they complete that. They can then look at their results. So same sort of process here and the page looks similarly as well. So top three results based on their ratings. And then again, they can click to see associated careers based on their, um, the selection. And then the final assessment that we have within the website here is what are my skills.

So this looks a little bit different. So students. Well, rate their skills, uh, from. Um, from high, average, low, and none, and these are, um, strengths based upon, uh, six categories. So basic, complex, problem solving, resource management, social, uh, systems, and technical. So the student can, uh, rate that, use logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses.

Um, maybe they feel like they're average in that capacity. So there are 32 skills that they rate. And then same process they can see how those, um, get to that results page. So, um, previous results here. I won't bring you through the 32, but get get the picture how that works. But then you can see. Um, based off of the rating, where the student rated themselves as, uh, most experienced, average, little, and no experience.

And then this pop up allows the student to add their skills, their highest rated skills, to their profile details, and that field feeds into a resume builder. Okay, so three assessments. What are my interests? What are my values? What are my skills? So once students have gone through those assessments, then I'd like to show you how they can apply those results to a career search.

So we're still under discover careers. We're going to click on career search. So this is where the student has the opportunity to apply their results to a comprehensive career search. So let me just scroll down here. Let me just explain this page a little bit. So the student can filter out a list of careers by education level, and I'll show you how that works in just a moment.

If a student has a career category in mind that they would like to look at further, let me just give you an example. Say we have a student who may want to go into the health profession, and they're just starting out that journey of looking at careers that fit into that. So they just click on that health and human services.

Maybe they're thinking that they would like to go to school for vocational training or a two year degree, they can click on, click on the education level filter here and as you can see, as I add filters, the number of careers goes down. So this is a filtered list based on based on what I added. To my filters and then we have students can click if there's something on this list that they would like to explore further can just click on the career and it will bring them to that career details page.

So let's clear out this because I would like to show you how if a student has maybe a particular career in mind, they can, they can add that to this page so I'm going to apply my values results. So I'm just going to click on use my values. So, My top three values from that assessment is brought in as a filter to this page automatically.

So you can see my top three values for achievement relationship and work conditions. I can do the same with the top interests. And I can also apply the skills. So, obviously, if you're applying more filters, the list narrows down further. So, for just demonstration purposes, I'm going to apply my values results.

And then, say I'm a person that's thinking that they may want to go into some kind of fire science. You know, maybe becoming a, uh, uh, maybe looking at, let's see if I. Did I search it there? Um, I'm just going to put in the search and fire, and then I'm also going to apply the education level. So maybe I'm a student that like to go to school for vocational training or a two year degree.

So just based on that, I can see that we have two Two results here and I'm going to say forest fire inspector and prevention specialist. It's kind of interesting to me. So I'm going to click on that and it brings you up to this details page, which I showed you a few minutes ago with a different career.

So this is a forest fire inspector and prevention prevention specialist and you can see summary at the top here projected growth what career category. This career falls into required education level. And then again, as we scroll down, you can see a lot of great details of daily tasks of this particular profession, uh, work at what work activities may include.

There's a little, there's a video here. Typically those are about 90 seconds long. You can listen to somebody describe what they do in a day, what their job entails, more careers like this. And then as we scroll down to the bottom here, you'll see if the student has identified top skills high that they're high in, those will be applied here.

And then also if they've taken that interest assessment, work values assessment, how this career matches up to their results. So let me scroll back up here because I want to take it one step further. So we have within this box here programs of study. So these are programs of study that are related to this career that we, we have on, on the page here.

So I would like to look at firefighting, fire science and firefighting. I want to be a firefighter. So I'm going to click on that program of study. And what this does is this brings The student to the college search page. So all of the colleges within the United States that have this particular program of study are listed.

Our database comes from Peterson's so that's also updated on a regular basis. So, within the United States there are 324 undergrad schools and programs are found within these, these, these schools. So now what the student can do. Is maybe, you know, maybe they don't want to go out of Massachusetts. And that's, that's okay.

Let's, so let's see what schools offer this program, this fire science program within Massachusetts. All I did was I went to the region and selected Massachusetts. So now we're seeing that within Massachusetts. We have seven schools that offer this fire science firefighting program. So now from here, I would like to say I live in the Brockton area, and I want to be able to commute to school.

So I'm going to see what Massasoit has to offer. So you can see the location, what type of school that is, the tuition deadlines for the application. As you can see, uh, and then as we scroll down here, you can see those majors and degrees that are offered at that school. So let's expand this out. And just to confirm that fire science is part of their curriculum.

So let's see here. Yeah, here it is under Homeland Security, law enforcement, firefighting. So you can see that, um, that is offered at this particular institution. So then we can scroll down to the very bottom. That is less, you know, And then you can see contact information for that school, a direct link to the school's website and to the admissions website.

Alright, so student can then, if they would like to, save this college to their list. So potentially they've saved Firefighter to their career list. They've saved Massasoit Community College to their college list. So they can go back to those lists to review. And to really confirm a direction that they would like to go.

So here are all the colleges that the student has on their list, and you can see Massasoit added here. So, whether you're a current high school student, or a recent graduate, we encourage you to create an account in MIFA pathway to help determine your next steps in building that career plan. Additionally, let me jump over here.

To the script great website that we have. Um, this is MIFA. org slash your future. And this is a dedicated page to guide and assist students and making a plan for the future. So here we are. Let me just scroll down and walk you through this a little bit. So again, the website is mifa. org slash your future and we have up at the top here a direct link to meet the pathway.

The website I just walked you through a little bit of. Uh, getting started. If you, uh, need help in getting started and using me for pathway, you just click on this little button here and you can schedule a time to meet one on one with someone from our team to help you, uh, get you through that easy process.

But sometimes, you know, or if you have questions, of course. We have these upcoming webinars to help you plan for this fall in future paths. So we have, as you can see we have a handful here, great we have our FAFSA festival. So if you're considering attending a community college in the fall and you need help filling out the FAFSA.

Join us on. We have two times that we're offering here their drop in times 10 to 12 and four to six, and we'll pair you with an expert a one on one to help you complete your FAFSA. And then we have saving money on community college with mass mass transfer. So this is where you can learn about the cost saving benefits of starting college at a community college.

and transferring to a public state university. And that is highlighting a tool within MIFA pathway. And then we also have a, uh, a webinar, um, featuring, uh, how you can learn more about, um, trends, job growth potential, uh, in which careers are popular in different parts of the country to help you make a plan for the future.

So and so lots going on lots of great stuff going on here. And then if we scroll down the bottom we have information on mass community colleges and then a link to some of financial aid resources. Also helpful podcasts, of course, always fun to listen to, and blog posts. So, we have a lot of resources and a lot of guidance offered.

Um, so let me go back here and just, let's see, let's get back to this slide here. Uh, let's see. Let's get back to our PowerPoint. All right, and. Sorry about that.

Oh, there we go. Okay, so let me just go back one here so always posting on social media offering guidance and resource so follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Always offering again great guidance and resources. And then of course, if you have questions, we're always here to help. We have our college planning team that are answering calls Monday through Friday, not during the summer, nine to six, you can always shoot us an email.

Or take advantage of those, uh, those one on one sessions that we offer. You can meet with someone from our team, always happy to, to, to speak with people. Uh, so let's open this up for questions. If anyone has any questions on anything that we covered during this webinar, uh, just pop that right. Pop that right in the, um, in the QA.

I don't see any questions coming our way here. I'll give another couple seconds here before we. Wrap it up. All right, doesn't look like there are any questions. Thank you for joining today. And again, don't hesitate to reach out to us. Take advantage of that, um, of that great webpage. Again, that's MIPHA. org slash your future and create an account in MIPHA pathway.

Lots of, lots of, um, great tools and features in there that students can take advantage of. All right. Have a great day. Thank you.

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