Career Aspirations of Adolescent Girls: Effects of Achievement Level,Grade, and Single-Sex School Environment

The career aspirations of high-achieving adolescent girls were explored by comparing them to the aspirations of adolescent boys as well as by looking at the influence of grade in school, achievement level, and an all-girls school environment. The participants' ideal and real career aspirations, scored in terms of prestige, were investigated via 2 sets of analyses , with coed (n = 704) and single-sex female (n = 494) adolescent samples. Results showed that high-achieving girls exceeded the aspirations of average-achieving girls and boys, and were the same as those of high-achieving boys. Gender and grade differences in ideal and real career choices over all achievement levels are also reported and discussed. Girls at single-sex schools had higher real career aspirations than did girls and boys at coed schools.