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<p>Yes - it can be optional - schools can refuse to accept government funding and not provide the data.</p>
<p>I’d like a new section K. Graduate salaries by major</p>
<p>There is a pretty long thread on CC somewhere discussing requiring schools to report job prospects of grads and salaries … if you search for it you probably can find it</p>
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<p>Rather, good luck in getting any u to give anyone this data. A u’s database of graduates is sealed pretty tightly, and any disclosure of information within this set has to be by consent of individual graduate – for instance, a health-insurance company that contracts with a u to insure its graduates. </p>
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<p>The top schools in the nation don’t need trade-related majors. A Harvard grad in English can just as likely land a plum WS job just as well as a grad from Wharton because of the name of the U. The important point is that most Harvard grads go to grad professional school in greater proportions than probably any other u, along with a good proportion that go the non-professional route with PHD’s in the social sciences and humanities. Is there anyone who would want to argue against the idea that the best chance for a prospective college student to attend either HLS or YLS is by attending Harvard for undergrad? And is there anyone of material amt. that attended Harvard and didn’t go to grad school and therefore become excluded from the survey? </p>
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<p>Undoubtedly not. But just because a company purports its u-salary data as precise and accurate doesn’t mean it is so, and in Payscale’s case, this cannot possibly mirror reality. It is a statistical impossibility. So the greater condemnation falls on Payscale for doling out impossibly unreliable data, and for many sites, including Forbes and the WSJ, for believing its data and running with it.</p>
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<p>Some universities do survey their graduates and post the results (level of detail varies; there are also variations in survey and reporting methodology, so caution is advised when comparing across schools).</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html</a></p>
<p>Yale University #93
University of Virginia (in-state) #109
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (in-state) #122
University of California-Los Angeles (in-state) #126
Georgetown University #135
University of Virginia (OOS) #174
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (OOS) #186
University of California-Los Angeles (OOS) #192
University of Chicago #246
Northwestern University #286
Emory University #308
Macalester College #330
Wesleyan University #332
Pomona College #343
Middlebury College #346
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (in-state) #362
Oberlin College #452
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (OOS) #496
Bowdoin College #692
Grinnell College #793
Davidson College #870
Wellesley College #992
Reed College #1131</p>
<p>I am no fan of Yale, but I cannot think of 92 universities I would pick over it! And the two Chicago elites? Woah!</p>
<p>I understand, ucb. But I was referring to LakeClouds’ “Good luck in getting schools to give you the data,” in which I assumed “you” to mean Payscale. The u’s themselves publish their own data without an outside entity like PS.</p>
<p>I only question u-based employment reports because as you maybe intimated along with the different methodologies, they could be loaded with a bunch of biases; they could be seriously tilted towards favorable employment/grad-appt. outcomes. More successful recent grads would probably be more inclined to submit the questionnaire also.</p>
<p>Re: Reed</p>
<p>If you look at the distribution of majors at Reed, its low ranking in the PayScale rank is no surprise: [Reed</a> College 2010-11 Common Data Set SecJ](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/ir/cds/cds1011/cdssecj201011.html]Reed”>Reed College 2010-11 Common Data Set SecJ - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>
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<p>I keep seeing this claim, but what evidence is there that survey answerers are the more successful ones? Certainly some of the survey results indicate a sizeable percentage of new graduates still seeking employment, particularly in majors like biology which have poor job prospects.</p>
<p>But even with whatever questions there may be on the survey methodology and reporting, the differences between majors within any given school do seem to be broadly similar across schools (e.g. biology majors generally tend to have a tough time in the job market).</p>
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<p>I’m just saying that a more successful grad wrt new employment and/or grad appt., would more likely submit a questionnaire, not exclusively. The idea of someone who is a waiter in his/her first job would probably only submit a survey to gain help from the u’s employment center; otherwise, he/she is most likely not going to divulge any status as to his/her underemployment because of shame or whatever. </p>
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<p>This may be a bio major’s intention wrt under or unemploymet, also, because he/she may still have designs on attending med school or some other health-related field. He/she may be intentionally unemployed because he/she is studying for the MCAT or other health-related grad tests. Why would this person seek a job in VC if that’s so far from what he/she wants professionally?</p>
<p>Btw, excellent work in your link, related to all the Career Centers at all the campuses. I’m sorry that I just looked at your link just now. Great work.</p>
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<p>That does sound very speculative. Have there been any studies where non-responders to the usual surveys were contacted to find out if their answers would have been meaningfully different from those who responded to the usual surveys?</p>
<p>Re: biology majors’ intentional underemployment</p>
<p>Seems unlikely, since someone trying to improve his/her qualifications for medical school would likely want to take some sort of biology job over an unrelated job. But then biology jobs do not appear to be very well paid. And it is not like every biology major would be in line for a high paying VC job if s/he wanted one.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, it does appear that only a small percentage of colleges and universities post any sort of by-major career survey results where the general public or prospective students can see them.</p>
<p>ucb - great list. Has anyone analyzed the data from the schools you posted?</p>
<p>Some of the schools that are good at selling logo sweatshirts may not be so great at getting graduates jobs which is what payscale points out.</p>
<p>Here’s a great link on an underemployed Harvard grad:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1410310-4-0-gpa-harvard-grad-working-retail-job.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1410310-4-0-gpa-harvard-grad-working-retail-job.html</a></p>
<p>^^I read a good portion of that thread (and, btw, I do wish I could get some of that time back) and the example given doesn’t stand for the case you wish to prove. Nevertheless, even if it did, I think if I had my choice between spending an hour in a cab driven by an under employed humanities major and an under employed accounting major - the humanities major would win. Overwhelmingly.</p>
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<p>So a WJ job is somehow not “trade-related”? If that’s the case, we need a whole lot more “tradesman” and a lot fewer blood sucking I-bankers, Vulture capitalist and Private Equity Churn and Burners.</p>
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<p>Or to bide time in a grad bio program. But, a lot of people probably wouldn’t think that way, and would rather want to be ungainfully employed because it would be an underchallenging position to allow more test prep. </p>
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<p>If the VC firm/company were to need someone who would be able to be trained to be expert in the biotech field, why not? Also, someone who’s been trained in the life sciences would seem to be a good candidate for an analyst type position that could crunch nos, and do all the things VC-ists need to do to find good investments. I think we tend to put especially bus-related positions in a box – person has to be bus or econ majors, etc. Engineers, generally, science majors, are be good candidates also. I’ve heard of those who washed out of med school (either didn’t get accepted or too much time elapsed in trying to get accepted) turn to bus-related careers and later attended excellent b-schools. Obviously those who’ve gone this route to their eventual careers undoubtedly struggled initially in gaining their eventual foothold. </p>
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<p>My example was of a Harvard grad who majored in English, a non-trade-very-academically-oriented major, ending up in the ultimate in trade-related jobs. But a good sense of humor nonetheless.</p>
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<p>But how many VC jobs are there of this type, compared to the number of biology majors there are?</p>
<p>Re: “The top schools in the nation don’t need trade-related majors.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, many of the popular liberal arts majors are chosen for pre-professional reasons:</p>
<p>economics -> business or finance
math, statistics -> finance
biology -> convenient for pre-med due to overlap with pre-med courses
political science, English -> seem to be popular pre-law majors for some reason</p>
<p>LakeClouds:</p>
<p>I didn’t get very far in your link of the Harvard grad with a 4.0 working retail, but I did read the first couple of posts. This is a good example of a Harvard grad not needing to major in a trade from the second post:</p>
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<p>And here’s a good example from the same post of Harvard grad working a menial job probably prepping for a GRE along with paperwork for grad application:</p>
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<p>ucb:</p>
<p>I’m just speaking of someone whose dream career of being an MD has ended. Just because this person didn’t attain his/her dream doesn’t mean he/she can’t have a successful career after retooling.</p>
<p>Also, UCB, did you happen to notice how many and which u’s gave specific law-school and med-school application outcomes of portions of their recent grads? I’d probably like to do an analysis of these u’s, as compared especially to UCLA and Cal, particularly to med school. We know that most private u’s tend to pump up their percentages by lowering the denominator figure, while UCLA and Cal don’t, and I’d like to estimate what real percentages are of m-school acceptances by specific u.</p>
<p>No, didn’t check for that, although some may have some stuff somewhere.</p>
<p>It may be more revealing if they stratified their statistics by GPA and MCAT score like <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2011seniors.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2011seniors.stm</a> , but that may be even harder to find.</p>