Employment Stats

How do they calculate the stats?

Reported by individuals? Is this 100% factual stuff?

Yeah, reported by students. so, maybe slightly inflated, but there really is no better way. Plus, all schools would be using the same technique

I agree, most people who travel do so having already accepted an offer (or being close to choosing among different offers). It's hard to imagine that people would travel around with no job in hand, specially since most students are close to broke by the end of their 2nd year.

The limitation I see with these statistics is the following:

- Do people who take jobs 3 months after graduation do so because they are waiting for their dream job and take longer to get it or do they give up after graduation and accept whatever job they can get?

I guess the answer varies by person, meaning the statistics would represent a combination of both options.

L.

no bonus info?

yeah, they have that too.

Lepium -

Some students haven't found anything, and for some, the jobs just come later. Smaller companies and certain industries hire as-needed (as I am sure you know). Anyway, my point is that if you're looking into nonprofit or some start-up, you may not nail things down till June, because they posted in May.

A few more flaws with the info :-

What % of students are reporting? If only 50% of the students are bothering to report then it can't be accurate.

Averages... can be easily skewed. If 5% of the class earn at least 50% more of the rest, it will seriously skew the mean. The median is a better indication of the salary wth data points at 1 standard deviation either way reported.

This can then be broken down into its component splits.. e.g. averages of students who find jobs abroad (developing countrries/developed countries etc.) Afterall, if a lot of people go to China and India, the averages will certainly go down.

from what i've seen, some schools report more detailed info than others. Duke addresses togo's points by giving medians, ranges, and various breakdowns: region of the US, country, industry, and others.

by the way - as for how many students you get, my guess is that most schools put a lot of effort into this. At the end of first semester, the career center had tables in the Fox Center, handing out candy and harassing each and every SY they saw. I'm sure they'll do the same at the end of this term. Our Career Fellows also "knock on doors" to get the data. I think our reporting numbers are pretty high.

Some schools report number of offers at graduation and number of people who have accepted offers at graduation.
Still, the only way for them to do this is self reporting which is biased, but you do see "low" salaries reported by some schools so people who don't receive a good offer often still report their salary.

Here are the latest stats for Foster

https://foster.washington.edu/career/emp_stats.shtml

Pretty good stats and companies recruiting there.

91% of grads reported their salary..

westsider,
the data you have cited are the older ones. Anyway, that data is pretty imressive but I was a little worried by the average numbers because I had thought that the average salary figures were a but skewed by one guy in that batch who reported a salary of $300000! I had even discussed about that with my interviewer but he had no convincing answer to that. I was then very anxiously looking forward to the employment stats of 2007. As usual, UW posted it very late but thank god they did. I was consoled by the stats because this time the range of salaries was not as high as it was in 2006 but both the median and the mean had increased. The % employed figures had slightly decreased but I am not too bothered about that. Dan Poston wrote to me recently that their employment stats are going to be even stronger this time as most people already have job offers. This is what he wrote:

"My career services director just told yesterday at this point among June 2008 graduates we have only domestic students still looking for a job! The international students are set."

I know this is very consoling for internationals like me but it's good news for everyone attending Foster this fall!!!

1. If we go through background checks, the B school stats should also go through checks.

2. Total number of offers and number of offers per student should be reported. This will give a better inication of recruiting strength year to year and school to school.

Just by virtue of wanting/needing to be employed at 3 months after gradution, I would assume 90+% of graduates at all schools (decently ranked) will be employed. This doesn't really show anything.