Frequently Asked Questions – Encourage

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• What is Encourage? ​
  • Encourage is a mission-driven program that encompasses a suite of free tools, timely advice, and resources designed to provide a deeper level of guidance and intentional engagement to all learners, champions, and educators. Our purpose is to meet any learner where they are to help them take their next step toward a better life. Not every learner is on a college-bound path, nor is everyone expected to only have one career in their lifetime. 
• Why should students download the Encourage app?
  • The Encourage app is free and combines goal setting and milestone tracking with resources for exploration, career planning, and paying for college. It’s easy to get started, and lets students match with colleges, scholarships, define and shape their goals, and envision their futures…all in one place. 
• Why should educators be interested in Encourage?​
  • We engage with more than 20,000 educators each year to deploy the myOptions Encourage Post-Secondary Planning Program. Together with our partners, we serve about 1 million students annually across 5,000 school districts and 13,000 high schools in all 50 states. Educators who participate receive access to interactive reports of their students’ postsecondary plans through myOptions Encourage, our no-cost digital platform. The educator web app provides aggregated, real-time dashboards and reports, as well as insight into the students’ plans, aspirations, and gaps.
• Why Should Educators Participate in the myOptions Encourage Survey Program?
  • This is a direct way to connect students with the free resources, advice, and tools that are designed to not only make their exploration journey more valuable, but to help take some of the weight off the educator’s shoulders. Our tools and technologies are not meant to replace human interaction by any means, we are simply trying to help equip educators and make their job a tiny bit easier.
• Why Should Students Participate in the myOptions Encourage Survey Program?
  • For students, it is a way to connect with colleges and universities that might want to recruit them. It is also a connection point between students and the free Encourage resources and tools available to them to help them during their post-high school discovery journey. Once the student survey is returned, the student will be invited by email to download the Encourage app. To ensure colleges can connect with students and that the Encourage invitation is received by students, students should use their legal name, personal email address, and home address when completing the survey.
• Questions? Reach out to our team!
  • We’re a team of former educators, counselors, and education equity advocates. We are committed to no-cost solutions, building pathways for students to achieve their dreams, and we are evolving and reimagining our products, services, and resources to meet the needs of secondary education to better impact student success. We’d love to connect with you to demonstrate our tools, talk over the process and show the suite of resources and reports available to our partners, students, and the educators who support them. Contact us at educators@myoptions.org