<p>Is there a way to find the statistics for how many UR graduates are employed upon graduation? Also, to compare apples to apples, is there a way to sort the % employed after graduation (6 months out) by major? It would be different to compare a pre-med to a major in economics or another major for example.</p>
<p>I’ve been posting on CC for years - not on this board because now one of my children will be going to Rochester. </p>
<p>Statistics on jobs are iffy at best and are one of the most manipulated metrics that ranking publications try to use. I’ve seen some of the data. It’s not very good. Some schools send out surveys, but then what’s the response rate? Some try to track hiring done from on-campus interviews but that says nothing much about most kids. And so on. Do you think that colleges actually know what happens to each kid after graduation? Or why it happens? </p>
<p>As an aside, I’d ask you to look critically at your question. Is it likely that there’s a meaningful difference in job placement between school x and school y unless there’s a really obvious, like glaringly obvious perceived quality difference? (At this point, people usually bring up Harvard or MIT.) I’ve seen questions about job placement comparisons for Asian studies departments, as if there is any meaningful information on that. </p>
<p>You go to school for an education. Maybe you want a specific education - like business or Asian studies. You go to a school that has your program and if your interest is special - like music or marine biology or ceramics - then maybe you look at a specific set of schools for that. You learn. You get whatever grades you earn. You graduate. You live your life. The name on your diploma is far less meaningful than what you as a person bring to your life. </p>
<p>I have had versions of this conversation with dozens, if not hundreds of kids over the years. They are consumed first by prestige, as if lousy ranking methodology generates an actual list of schools listed in order and then somehow that this order translates into something meaningful like grad school acceptances or jobs and, especially, into more money. Kids have taken on huge debt because they bought this prestige story, like a place on the ranking was a fancy pair of shoes. (Rochester has stood out by trying not to participate in that madness.) </p>
<p>Here are a few basic truths:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Law school is by the numbers. Grades and LSAT. You can do well anywhere, at any reputable school. Kids from Yale are more likely to get in because they scored higher on the SAT and thus on the LSAT. Same is generally true of medical school; you do well anywhere and score well on the MCAT. Grad school can be cruel; places in some programs are limited - in small fields - and grad school, unlike undergrad, counts for how much you make because academic jobs last and your first few jobs put you on a trajectory. Want to be an economist, an academic economist? Top 14 grad programs. Need very good grades and a perfect math score. (And you should be majoring in math and econ.) </p></li>
<li><p>What you earn is largely determined by your field. Engineers that do x make y dollars for z pay grade. Grad school can change trajectory - as in top law school leads to higher salary - but generally speaking a job is a job and being from a school ranked 10 places higher means squat. </p></li>
<li><p>What you earn is directly related to where you live. You’ll make more living in New Jersey than Arkansas because personal income is higher in NJ. The cost of living is also higher there. </p></li>
<li><p>Kids who get into more prestigious schools but go to less prestigious schools earn the same as kids who went to the more prestigious schools. The data set isn’t that large - not a well studied area - but it shows that it is the person, not the name on the diploma that counts.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This is why my daughter made Rochester her first choice: they are about education. She wants to be challenged. She figures the rest will work itself out.</p>
<p>Lergnom has taken the words right out of my mouth. The focus is certainly on education, and statistics are so difficult to accurately compile regarding life after Rochester precisely because the response rate to surveys and other forms of communication are so low. </p>
<p>For what it is worth… what we do know suggests that somewhere around 1/3 of the graduating population goes immediately into career related jobs, 1/3 immediately to graduate programs, and 1/3 to non-career related jobs (including peace-corps, americorps, etc.).</p>
<p>Also, Rochester students are close to the top of the list in terms of the rate at which students pay back student loans, which suggests life after Rochester yields solid job prospects. I’ve mentioned that in a few other posts as well.</p>
<p>Thank you for the responses. The reason I had intially asked is because while UR is my top choice, I am trying to get a better sense of the prospects fater graduation as opposed to more traditional undergraduate business schools. As with anything in the college search process, these statistics must be taken with a grain of salt. Thank you for your responses.</p>