Post-Graduate Outcomes

Drexel assesses employment and graduate school outcomes of its undergraduates through a two-part survey process.

First, we survey the entire graduating class in the Spring of their senior year, a few weeks before graduation. Many students have lined up firm employment or graduate school plans by this time, but many have not. The response rate for this survey in recent years has been over 90%

Next, we again survey the entire graduating class about nine months later to obtain a snapshot of graduates' activity in the year after graduation. The response rate for this survey has been closer to 50% in recent years.

In reporting the so-called "one-year-out" post-graduate outcomes of our undergraduates, we combine these data sources as follows:

1. If a valid response exists to the post-graduation (nine months after graduation) survey, that determines that student's status in the report.
2. If a valid response does not exist for the post-graduation survey -- as is the case for about half the graduating class -- we include data from the graduating senior survey (administered just before graduation) for students that had definitive employment and graduate school outcomes at that time. This means they said they had a specific job with a specific employer, or had accepted an offer of admission to a specific program in a specific graduate school.

Combining these two sources of data, this typically produces a "knowledge rate" for about two-thirds of our graduating class. The National Association for Colleges and Employers (NACE) recommends a knowledge rate of at least 65%.

We have not at this time elected to take the step of including data from social media such as LinkedIn, as many schools do, as we have concerns about the validity of these (self-report) data.