Aptitude tests aren’t cheap. However, some aptitude assessments are more affordable (and more expensive) than others. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you’ll likely want to take the Highlands Ability Battery (HAB). This is especially true if the person taking the career aptitude assessment test is a student. The Highlands Ability Battery is the most affordable, comprehensive aptitude test. In this article, we’ll explore the costs of taking the Highlands Ability Battery.
Highlands Ability Battery Costs
The Highlands Ability Battery costs vary depending on which licensed consultant you use. However, most licensed HAB consultants charge between $450 and $600. Paying this fee gives you the following:
- Access to HAB Student Career Exploration Report
- Access to Student Standard Aptitude Report
- 5 – 2 Hour Debrief with a HAB Certified Aptitude Testing Consultant
While short and simple, each one of those bullet points above holds an infinity of sub-points.
What’s included in the Highlands Ability Battery Costs?
The Highlands Ability Battery measures 19 psychometrics, each summarized below.
Personal Style
- Generalist/Specialist: Identifies your preference for focusing on a specific area (Specialist) or working within a broader, group-oriented context (Generalist).
- Introvert/Extrovert: Determines whether you prefer solitary tasks (Introvert) or thrive in social, interactive environments (Extrovert).
- Time Frame Orientation: Looks at how far into the future you naturally plan and set goals.
Driving Abilities
- Classification: Assesses how well you identify relationships between seemingly unrelated events, data, or situations.
- Concept Organization: Measures your capacity to arrange ideas, information, or tasks in a logical, sequential order.
- Idea Productivity: Reflects the number of new ideas you generate in response to a given situation or challenge.
- Spatial Relations Theory: Relates to your understanding of how mechanical or theoretical systems function.
- Spatial Relations Visualization: Involves your capability to visualize and mentally manipulate objects in three dimensions.
Specialized Abilities
- Design Memory: Looks at how effectively you recall and use visual patterns and designs.
- Observation: Tests your attentiveness to and recall small visual details and changes.
- Verbal Memory: Indicates how efficiently you learn and remember new words and written information.
- Tonal Memory: Relates to your recall and reproduction of tunes, tonal sequences, and sounds.
- Rhythm Memory: Measures your retention of rhythm patterns and learning through movement.
- Pitch Discrimination: Assesses your ability to distinguish nuanced differences in pitch.
- Number Memory: Reflects how easily you remember numerical information and miscellaneous data.
- Visual Speed and Accuracy: Looks at how quickly and accurately you interpret visual symbols.
Vocabulary
- General Vocabulary: Indicates the range and depth of your word knowledge and verbal communication skills.
How Does the Highlands Ability Help Students Prepare For College?
These psychometrics alone are an invaluable help to students. Yet, their value is compounded when woven together through the HAB’s technology and advised by an experienced consultant. The HAB provides immeasurable insight to students preparing for college and entering the workforce.
For example, the HAB gives students data-driven insights into how they best learn. Fortunately, when they complete the Highlands Ability Battery, students take five work samples that measure aptitudes we HAB consultants call learning channels. The learning channels consist of the five aptitudes below.
- Design Memory
- Number Memory
- Rhythm Memory
- Tonal Memory
- Verbal Memory
When students complete the assessment and access their reports, they can see how they learn, remember, and process information best. I want to emphasize here that these are not “learning styles.” A learning style is how a student prefers to learn, while learning aptitudes are how students actually learn.
This information benefits students with learning differences who sometimes struggle to stay focused or remember complicated concepts. Consequently, the data measured by the HAB and delivered through a Highlands Consultant removes much of the guesswork about how students learn.
Furthermore, in the career report, students can see all the careers that correlate with their aptitudes. To see a sample of the career report, click on the link below:
Finally, the jobs the career report recommends show which career harmonizes with a student’s natural abilities. Thus, students can confidently pick career paths that align with their inborn strengths. That kind of data is priceless and is key in executing any thoughtful career planning strategy for students.
Is the Highlands Ability Battery the Cheapest Aptitude Test?
Technically, the cheapest aptitude assessment is YouScience. While it costs only a fraction of the HAB, you lose several key aptitude traits that we delve into in detail in our What is the YouScience Aptitude Test? Article. As such, while the YouScience Aptitude Test is technically an aptitude test, it’s the least comprehensive career aptitude assessment. There are only three aptitude tests in existence that really qualify as comprehensive aptitude tests. They are as follows:
The Highlands Ability Battery is easily the least expensive comprehensive aptitude test. The Johnson O’Connor cost 850, and the AIMS test cost 925. Additionally, those two aptitude tests require students and families to travel to one of their aptitude testing sites. This means further expenses for traveling.
To illustrate this, the closest aptitude testing site to me and the families I work with lies in Dallas. If one of the local families wanted to test their student at one of these families, this is a conservative breakdown of how much they would need to budget to take the Johnson O’Connor.
- Total Travel Cost for Two People:
- Gas: $100.00
- Hotel: $300.00
- Food: $240.00 (6 meals at $20.00 per meal × 2 people)
- Total: $640.00
- Aptitude Testing Fee for One Person: $850.00
- Overall Total Cost (Travel + Testing): $1490.00
As you can see, these costs add up. To say nothing of the time spent traveling.
Why I Use the HAB with Students
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing but great respect for the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation. I have the same professional reverence for the AIMS aptitude assessment research team. Much of what I do is inspired by their excellent work. If families want to use their services, they’ll be treated well and cared for by their more than competent staff.
I promote the HAB over their assessments, though, for three primary reasons.
The Highlands Ability Battery Is Affordable
As I mentioned earlier, most families can’t afford to spend 850-925 on an aptitude test. And that’s only to pay for the assessment fees. The expenses of traveling to the testing center locations add up. Also, most kids needing aptitude tests require other educational services. For example, students who don’t self-study need ACT PREP to qualify for more scholarships. As most know, test prep isn’t cheap either. With more and more colleges moving away from test-optional, parents have to pay for ACT tutoring again. What money you save on an aptitude test can afford to give you a few more tutoring sessions.
The Highlands Ability Is More Accessible To Students
The HAB provides immense accessibility for students. Even families who can afford the Johnson O’Connor or AIMS’ steeper fees, those same families usually don’t want to spend an entire weekend traveling to take an aptitude assessment. That’s one of the reasons I love the HAB. It’s by far the most accessible aptitude test. The HAB allows students to take the assessment in their homes via a desktop computer or laptop. Moreover, students don’t have to take the evaluation all at once. They can break their testing into sittings to make the test-taking experience more manageable.
HAB Is Independently Validated
Additionally, the HAB has its roots in Johnson O’Connor. The HAB is actually the written version of Johnson O’Connor adapted to digital format. Johnson O’Connor refined the assessment for decades. Upon being taken over by the Highlands Company, the assessment’s reliability was evaluated by an independent research Human Resource Non-Profit. Consider the following research findings from the analysis conducted by the Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO):
The overall Interrater Reliability Estimate for HAB-O*NET Linkage ratings by O*NET Worker Characteristic (treating HAB scales as target of measurement) ranged from .72-.98. The overall Interrater Reliability Estimates for HAB-O*NET Linkage rating by HAB Scale (treating O*NET worker characteristics as targets of measurement) ranged from .87-.97. This reflected the consistency with which SMEs were able to order O*NET worker characteristics in terms of their relation to a given HAB scale.
–Stiles, Dori, Ph.D. Development of the Occupation Fit Algorithm for the Highlands Ability Battery. The Highlands Company LLC, Mar. 2020.
These high Interrater Reliability Estimates demonstrate the strong agreement among experts, indicating that the HAB’s occupation fit algorithm is both consistent and reliable. When experts repeatedly agree to this extent, it validates the tool’s effectiveness in accurately matching individuals’ natural abilities to corresponding occupations. This scientific validation reassures users that the HAB is a trustworthy tool for making informed career decisions for students.
Conclusion
If your student is preparing for college, buy their aptitude test now. By taking the HAB, they’ll learn powerful insights that will guide them through their education and career trajectory. Students who take an aptitude test gain confidence when picking their college major, better prepare for their college admissions applications and learn the skills they need for their careers. Additionally, subscribe to our newsletter with the link below for great college readiness tips and best practices on using aptitude testing.
Happy Testing!
-Marc
References
[1] Stiles, Dori. “Tests and Assessments for Career Counseling Services & Coaches.” The Highlands Company, https://www.highlandsco.com/discover-what-you-do-best/career-counselors-consultants/. Accessed 9 August 2024.
[2] The Highlands Company. “Natural Abilities – Specialized Abilities and How You Learn Best.” The Highlands Company, 15 November 2016, https://www.highlandsco.com/specialized-abilities-and-how-you-learn-best/. Accessed 2 August 2024.
[3] The Highlands Company. “Career & College Major Test for College & High School Students.” The Highlands Company, https://www.highlandsco.com/discover-what-you-do-best/highlands-for-students/. Accessed 9 August 2024.