<p>The often interesting Economix blog at the New York Times had a recent posting by a Princeton alum examing postgrad employment breakdown at Harvard, Yale and Princeton. I haven't really had the time to examine all the date closely, but a couple of quick observations are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Not surprisingly, grads going into finance have dropped dramatically at all 3 schools since the peak of 2006;</p></li>
<li><p>The career destinations of H and Y grads are pretty similar</p></li>
<li><p>Princeton sends a dramatically higher percentage of its grads to Wall Street than the other two (35% at P; 17% at H and 14% at Y)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Variations in how the 3 schools collect and release data obviously complicate analysis.</p>
<p>“Of Princeton seniors who had full-time jobs lined up after graduation, 35.9 percent went into finance in 2010 (the most recent year available).”</p>
<p>Only 33.9 percent of Princeton seniors (395/1166) had full-time jobs lined up after graduation in 2010. Of that 395, 35.9 percent (142) went into finance. So, 12.2 percent (142/1166) of the Princeton Class of 2010 went into finance.</p>
<p>^ If only 142 went into finance right after graduation, I suspect that, for Princeton, even fewer (say, 90) students got into a medical school without a gap year. (Likely roughly the same number of students may get in after one or more gap years.) If this is true, the well-published 90+ percents medical school admission rate needs to be read and interpreted with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>Supoose that, without a gap year, 7 percents go to the law school, 6 percents go to the medical school, and 6 percents go to the graduate school. The 12.2 percents into finance all of a sudden looks pretty “good.” Actually, as shallow as it may be, some students at such an elite school might think if they do not take advantage of the school’s name to help them get into such a lucrative (moneyed!) finance career, they may not fully utilize the value of their school’s name.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you look at the underlying data, you can (almost) tell exactly how many Princeton students went directly to medical school . . . and it’s a lot less than 90. It’s somewhere around 55. (They only give a percentage, and don’t make entirely clear what denominator they are using, so it could be 47, 56, or 57.)</p></li>
<li><p>The “full-time jobs” figure is misleadingly low, since it excludes year-long paid internships, which is what entry-level jobs are called in a number of fields, the military, professional sports (that’s not a job?), and self-employment. Including those categories would increase the denominator by over a third, probably reducing the percentage of financial services jobs significantly. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Then, of course, there are all the people who, as of May of their last year of college, were still looking for a job. That group together with the odd-and-ends categories cited above represent over half of the graduates expecting to be employed. Some of them may not have found work, but I bet most of them did . . . not necessarily in financial services.</p>
<ol>
<li> The real story for me in that blog, confirmed by the backup data, is the sharp reduction in students going directly to graduate or professional school. Whereas I might have thought the economic and employment woes were sending more kids to graduate school, it looks like elite university graduates are skeptical of the value of further education, and are taking advantage of their credentials and relative strength in the job market to grab jobs, not professional school slots, and certainly not PhD program slots. Of course, many of those initially taking jobs will go back and get a further degree in a few years, but I am shocked by how low a percentage of the graduates are continuing their education immediately.</li>
</ol>
<p>I agree with you that my number (90) is off.</p>
<p>One data point (which may be skewed): out of 6 suitemate in DS’s suite freshman year:</p>
<p>Immediately after graduation: 1 law school, and 1 medical school.</p>
<p>After 1 gap year: another one went to medical school.</p>
<p>After 2 gap years: likely another one will go to law school.</p>
<p>None went to or plans to go to (non-professional) graduate school.</p>
<p>So eventually, 50 percents continue their education. I guesss their suite happens to have more book-ish ones. (but still not book-ish enough to enter a PhD program.)</p>
<p>Hmm…also, it appears the ones from the weathier families (e.g., those who went to the high quality/high price prep school before college) have less motivation to further their education. A degree from an elite college seems to be good enough for them to enter the career they wish to pursue.</p>
<p>Another interesting observation: At an elite college in NE, it appears whites (possibly with the exception of Jewish-white) tend to be less involved with a campus-wide religious organization/club, percentage-wise speaking. If this is true, I do not understand why.</p>