Psychological Potential Identification of a Private Vocational High School Students, Indonesia: Suitability of Interests, Aptitude, and Selected Majors

Abstract

One of private Vocational High School in Indonesia has not implemented a selection system based on aptitude and interest, which is very important in the success of students when following the learning process. This study aims to help the school to identify the psychological otential of new students. The collection of data used psychological tests: intelligence, aptitudes, and interests tests. The subjects of this study were grade X (ten) students from the Pharmacy major (69 students) and Industrial Chemistry (14 students). The results show that the average level of intelligence of students majoring in pharmacy was higher than that of industrial chemistry. The more prominent aptitude in both majors was on understanding, more than 50% of students had a score in the category of enough. The aptitude of calculating was balanced between those in which the categories were enough and below average, while for the reasoning, the majority was in the categories of below average. The results of the interest inventory showed that the majority of students already had a consistent interest and in accordance with the choice of their current majors. It appears that students had a strong interest, even with less prominent abilities. The program that needs to be prepared by the school is to optimize this high interest as an encouragement for students to be actively involved in learning, accompanied by learning methods that are more practical, giving gradual and simultaneous assignments, and learning evaluation are done more frequently, for example at the end of each subject.