Careers advice

At Abbotsleigh, careers advice is considered vital in preparing our students for a fulfilling life after school. It takes the form of both formal instruction of Year 10 students and individual counselling of all senior girls. Parents are warmly welcomed to make appointments to discuss their daughter’s tertiary options.

In Year 10, all students undertake Morrisby Profiling, which assesses their aptitudes, aspirations and interests. The result of this profiling assists them to select suitable subjects for their senior studies, as well as providing them with detailed information about their future tertiary options. Year 10 students also learn how to formulate a digital portfolio, write a resume and acquire interview skills. This culminates in a week of work experience outside the school, where girls have real-world practice of job-seeking, in a workplace they have selected and arranged for themselves.

Further opportunities for students to seek and extend their understanding of careers that appeal to them are offered through our Career Focus evenings, which occur regularly each year. An online panel of former Abbotsleigh girls and recent graduates, who work in an area of common interest – for example, health, business or design – talk about their training and work and are often able to illustrate through their own career history how they have managed to change or combine career interests. These evenings can also be run on campus with several panels, made up from former students, happy to share their expertise about their work and the training and skills required. Past students regularly provide valuable mentorship or work experience options for our girls.

To help students become more confident about their tertiary education options, every term there are lunchtime speakers from a range of institutions who come to speak to a voluntary audience of the senior girls. They talk about what makes their courses different to similar ones offered elsewhere, scholarships, exchange opportunities, accommodation, early entry programs and the like. There are also speakers who present information on specific career pathways in these lunchtime sessions. Online webinars allow our girls to hear from tertiary institutions farther afield, both interstate and overseas. Sometimes, during tutor time, the girls hear from recent school leavers about how school differs from university and about the value of gap years.

We are lucky to have such valuable resources in the person of our past students. We are grateful that they are so willing to give up their time to instruct and mentor our girls in a variety of ways on careers matters.

The Careers Information page on the Abbotsleigh website provides newsletters, details of career-focused holiday activities and career-based webinars or in-person events that girls can register to attend. It also provides reminders of due dates for applications for compulsory tertiary entry programs like the UCAT for Medicine and the LAT for law at UNSW and Tertiary Open Days, plus closing dates for scholarship and cadetship applications and early entry schemes. On the Careers Information page, there are links to areas of interest for students, such as gap year ideas, interstate universities, private tertiary colleges and TAFE. There is also information about tertiary entry schemes like Elite Athlete and Performers schemes, Additional Factors and information on many careers.

The Careers program at Abbotsleigh can advise students on their applications to local as well as overseas tertiary institutions. Advice on how to write a strong personal statement and how to organise co-curricular activities to make a convincing application is also available. Abbotsleigh girls have furthered their studies in the United Kingdom, including at Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Durham, London School of Economics, University College London and the University of the Arts, and in the United States, at colleges including NYU, Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Duke and Miami.