StrengthsFinder UIowa: Find Your Results and Use Them to Pick a Major

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StrengthsFinder UIowa: The Gallup Test Every 2016 Freshman Took

The StrengthsFinder UIowa program was one part of Be Better @ Iowa, a campuswide effort the university started in 2016. Its stated aim was to help undergraduates become successful students, leaders, citizens, and employees. The tool at the center was Gallup’s Clifton StrengthsFinder, an online test that sorts 34 “talent themes” from strongest to weakest and hands you the top five. Gallup has since renamed it CliftonStrengths. If an Iowa office says CliftonStrengths and your old email says StrengthsFinder, they mean the same StrengthsFinder UIowa report.

The rollout was big. A 2017 Iowa Now story on Be Better @ Iowa reported that about 13,000 current students had completed the assessment. Nearly 300 faculty and staff had been trained to work with it, and some 30 academic courses had folded strengths into their teaching. In a survey of students from the 2016 to 2017 school year, 63 percent said they had talked about their strengths in at least one setting.

The thinking behind it is Gallup’s: a talent turns into a strength only when you put time and practice into it. That is why Iowa built the five themes into classes and student groups instead of leaving them in a welcome-week folder. Paul Mintner, quoted in that 2017 story, summed up the goal: “We want students to learn what they do best and then practice those skills.”

The First Class Took It at Orientation; Later Classes Vary

For the first class, it was close to required. In a fall 2016 message from Tom Rocklin published by Iowa Student Life, he wrote that all incoming students that fall completed the Clifton StrengthsFinder and then explored their results during On Iowa!. It was part of the orientation plan, not an optional extra on a flyer.

For later classes, the record is thinner. The university’s public write-ups on the program date from 2016 and 2017, and the program site they point to, bebetter.uiowa.edu, no longer loads. If you are starting at Iowa now, your orientation emails are the real answer. Search your uiowa.edu inbox for “Gallup” or “CliftonStrengths” and see whether a code is waiting. Either way, it was never a test you pass or fail. You answer questions about yourself, and you get a ranked list back.

If you missed StrengthsFinder UIowa at orientation, you have lost nothing. You can take CliftonStrengths on your own at any point, and the results are kept in your own Gallup account.

How Be Better at Iowa Used Your UIowa StrengthsFinder Results: Teams, Not Majors

The Be Better at Iowa strengths model was designed to follow you past orientation. The 2017 story names the campus groups that used the five themes with their members:

• Fraternity and Sorority Life
• Career Leadership Academy
• Theme Semester Student Ambassadors
• President’s Leadership Class
• On Iowa! leader training
• UI Student Government

Add the roughly 30 courses that used the themes, and a student who was busy on campus could hear their top five named in a lecture, a chapter meeting, and a leadership retreat in the same semester. Students quoted in the story said it helped. Bernardo Duarte said he had “been able to identify when each one is playing a role in what I do.” Madeline Slater said that whether it confirms what you know or gives you “an extra boost of confidence,” the assessment is “a nice opportunity to learn more about yourself.”

Look at that list again and notice what it leans toward. Most of it is leadership and belonging. Rocklin’s message framed the program as a way for students to learn “what assets they bring to leadership.” Only one group on the list has the word career in its name.

StrengthsFinder UIowa was set up to help you lead and work in groups, and the link to a major or a job was mostly left for you to make. That was its purpose, and it shapes how you should read your StrengthsFinder UIowa report now. It was written to help you on a team. Using it to pick a major works, but you have to do some of the translating yourself, and the sections below show how.

Where Your UIowa StrengthsFinder Report Lives Now: Gallup, Not Iowa

Here is how to access StrengthsFinder results from the University of Iowa, whether you took the test last fall or back in 2016. Your StrengthsFinder UIowa results do not sit on a university site; they sit in a Gallup account tied to the email you used when you redeemed your code. So the job is finding that account.

1. Go to login.gallup.com. Gallup uses this one sign-in page for every CliftonStrengths account, old or new. The old StrengthsFinder-branded site is gone.
2. Use the email from orientation. Codes from campus programs usually arrived by school email, so many students set up their account with a uiowa.edu address. If that fails, try any personal email you used back then.
3. Open the report. After you sign in, choose Menu, then CliftonStrengths, then Reports. Your top five is listed there, with Gallup’s write-up for each theme.
4. Download the PDF. Save a copy to your own drive or phone, so you never need a password to see it again.

If the password fails, click the reset link under the sign-in fields. Gallup sends it to whatever email the account uses, which means a reset helps only while that inbox still opens for you. Our guide to signing in to Gallup and recovering an old account covers locked accounts and old emails step by step.

When a Second Sitting Is Worth It

For a uiowa StrengthsFinder retake, you need a new access code, because each code opens one sitting. Redeem it inside your existing account rather than a new one. Since June 2025, Gallup lets one account hold more than one set of results and pick which set is shown. If you see two records that never joined, Gallup’s support team can merge them.

Should you retake it? On Gallup’s retake page, two sittings by the same person correlate at 0.73 across the whole profile, and theme scores come out about 98% similar. What moves is the order, because a small change in one theme can swap two neighbors in the ranking. So a retake mostly gives you the same names in a slightly different order.

There is one case that fits a lot of Iowa students. Gallup names college students who rushed through the test as one group whose first result may be less reliable. If you took it on a laptop in a loud residence hall during welcome week, half paying attention, a second sitting in a quiet room is fair. For costs and timing, see our page on taking the StrengthsFinder test a second time.

The 34 CliftonStrengths Themes in Four Domains: What Your UIowa StrengthsFinder Five Reach For First

Here is the 34 CliftonStrengths themes list, grouped the way Gallup groups them on its theme list, into four domains. A plain way to read each domain is as an answer to one question: when a group needs something, what do you reach for first?

Executing (9 themes)

You reach for getting it done. Achiever, Responsibility, Discipline, Focus, Arranger, Consistency, Belief, Deliberative, Restorative. This is the person who finishes the group project two days early and then checks the citations.

Influencing (8 themes)

You reach for moving people. Activator, Command, Communication, Competition, Maximizer, Self-Assurance, Significance, Woo. This is the person who gets a stalled meeting to agree on a plan.

Relationship Building (9 themes)

You reach for holding the group together. Adaptability, Connectedness, Developer, Empathy, Harmony, Includer, Individualization, Positivity, Relator. This is the person who notices the quiet member of the group and pulls them in.

Strategic Thinking (8 themes)

You reach for thinking it through. Analytical, Context, Futuristic, Ideation, Input, Intellection, Learner, Strategic. This is the person who asks why the project is set up this way at all.

A theme is a habit you return to, not a grade. Your top five shows the habits you fall back on, and nothing about how good you are at them yet. Two students with Communication at number one can be very different public speakers. Both simply reach for words first. Practice decides the rest, which is exactly the point Iowa’s program was built on.

Reading Five Themes as One Profile: Tom Rocklin’s Example

Take a real StrengthsFinder UIowa example. In his 2016 message, Tom Rocklin shared his own five: Relator, Responsibility, Learner, Harmony, and Input. Sort them by domain and a picture shows up. Two are Relationship Building (Relator and Harmony). Two are Strategic Thinking (Learner and Input). One is Executing (Responsibility). None is Influencing.

Read as a set, that profile describes someone who keeps a few close working relationships, wants the group to get along, soaks up information, and does what they said they would. It does not describe someone who loves winning over a crowd. A person with those five could still do sales, but they would likely find it more tiring than a colleague with Woo and Competition up top.

Now try it on your own list:

1. Sort. Write each theme next to its domain and count where they bunch up. Three or more in one domain is your home base.
2. Pair. Look at two themes at a time. Learner with Input means you collect ideas and facts. Responsibility with Harmony means you keep promises and keep the peace. Pairs say more than single themes.
3. Prove. For each theme, name one time it showed up: a class, a job, a club. If you cannot find a single moment, give that theme less weight.

A domain with nothing in it is information too. You can still do that kind of work. It is just not your first move, so plan for it. Our guide to interpreting StrengthsFinder results goes theme by theme if you want more depth.

UIowa StrengthsFinder vs. a Career Fit Assessment: What Comes After Orientation

By the time most Iowa students think hard about a major, orientation is a year or two behind them. That is when people dig up their StrengthsFinder UIowa themes and ask them to do a new job. Before you lean on it, know what the test was built to do.

CliftonStrengths works like this. You see timed pairs of statements about yourself, about 35 minutes in all, and Gallup ranks the 34 themes against each other from your answers. It counts strengths only. The report shows the habits you use most and stays silent on the parts of work that drain you and the settings that wear you out. Nowhere in the report is there a list of majors or jobs. CliftonStrengths names your talents well, and it leaves the choice of a major or career to you.

Your Top Five and the Career Question

So your top five will not name a career, and it does not try to. What it can do is narrow the field. A student with most of their five in Strategic Thinking can cross off a job made of fast calls and quick yeses. What the report cannot see is the setting around the work: the pace, the hours on your own versus with people, the amount of rules and routine, and which parts of a week leave you flat. Over years, those details make a field feel livable or not, and they are where many capable people end up in the wrong job.

We make one of those career tools, so weigh this part knowing it is ours. Ours, the Pigment career test, has around 120 forced-choice questions. The report scores you on 82 traits, each a two-sided scale where neither end is the better one, so the side that drains you shows up next to the things you do well. A section called Career Alignment recommends roles to look into, as part of a 36-page report.

Gallup has decades of data behind CliftonStrengths. Pigment is newer, and no outside academic study backs it yet, so treat its picks as leads for your major decision rather than a verdict. Use it alongside your advisor and a few talks with people who do the work, never instead of them.

Who can skip it? If you are a first-year student without a real choice to make yet, your StrengthsFinder UIowa five is plenty this year. A second test is worth it when you are stuck between two majors and your top five fits both of them.

Six Steps From Your UIowa StrengthsFinder Top Five to a Short List of Majors

Your five themes will not pick a major for you. They are good at a smaller job: helping you choose between the majors you already like. Here is a way to do that in about a week, using things you already have at Iowa.

1. Get the report back. Download your StrengthsFinder UIowa report from your Gallup account, as above. Read Gallup’s write-up on each theme and mark the lines that sound like you.
2. Name your two or three real options. Not every major in the catalog. Only the ones you could see yourself declaring this year.
3. Read the upper-level courses, not the intro ones. Open each major’s course list and look at the higher-numbered classes you would take as a junior or senior. Count how many are built on labs, long papers, group presentations, or problem sets. Then hold that count up against your domains. A five heavy in Strategic Thinking usually enjoys long papers and research. A five heavy in Influencing usually enjoys presenting and debate.
4. Look up the jobs, not just the major. For each major, list three jobs graduates often take. Search each one on O*NET OnLine, a free job site run by the U.S. Department of Labor, and read its list of tasks. Those tasks are what your weeks would be full of. Ask which ones your themes would reach for and which you would put off.
5. Take it to the Pomerantz Career Center. Bring the PDF and your short list. A career advisor can tell you what Iowa students with similar interests went on to do, which is hard to find on your own.
6. Ask two people in the job what they would hand off. Every job has a part people would give away if they could. If that part matches your top five, it is a warning. If it is a part your themes would enjoy, that is a good sign.

Here is how that plays out. Say a sophomore’s StrengthsFinder UIowa results read Achiever, Focus, Deliberative, Analytical, and Learner, and they are torn between finance and journalism. Three of the five are Executing and two are Strategic Thinking. Nothing sits in Influencing or Relationship Building. The upper-level finance classes lean on models and problem sets. The journalism track leans on reporting, which means calling strangers and talking them into an interview. Neither major is ruled out. But the student now knows which part of each will cost them more, and can choose with that in view.

Your top five works best as a tiebreaker between majors you already like, and poorly when you are starting from a blank page. If you have no list yet, start with a tool made for that question. We line up several of them, free ones included, in our guide to career tests that help you pick a major.

StrengthsFinder UIowa FAQ

CliftonStrengths and StrengthsFinder are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. Pigment is not affiliated with them.