When I was a student looking for colleges last year, I was always interested to see what graduates of certain schools did after their four years. Unfortunately, it can be hard to find that info on websites. After committing to Williams, I’ve subscribed to the career center’s newsletter; the June issue had some stats about career paths that I think prospective students would appreciate:
Over 90% of grads of recent classes have found jobs, are in grad school, or are volunteering. This isn't new. Additionally, 87% of students are "extremely satisfied or satisfied" with what they're doing after graduation. In order, these are the places most Williams students are working after graduating: New York, Massachusetts, California, and Washington DC.
89% of Williams students had at least one internship before graduating, and 60% know of Williams alumni at the place that they are working.
Only 12% of Williams students move onto graduate school directly after graduating. Obviously, a greater percentage will get graduate degrees after some time in the workforce. However, this is still a surprising statistic and contrasts some popular perceptions about LACs.
These are the most popular fields that Williams students went into:
Science/Technology/Research (21%)
Education (15%)
Finance (13%)
Consulting (12%)
Law/Government (10%)
Professional Services (10%)
Arts/Media/Entertainment (7%)
Healthcare/Medicine (4%)
My main takeaway from the last two points is that Williams is more pre-professional than many LACs. A quarter of the class goes into finance/consulting. Adding up the percentages, around two thirds of the class goes into either science and tech, business and professional services, or law and government–all “traditional” fields.
Based on early career salary data available through U.S. News, Williams grads place second (after Hamilton and before Amherst) within the rarefied group comprised of the nine NESCAC LACs for which this information appears. For those wishing some degree of confirmation with respect to the financial aspects of their choice of Williams, this should be encouraging.
I feel like it is a well-kept secret that a huge proportion of the alums from all top universities and SLACs end up in finance or consulting–no matter how progressive or idealistic the school might seem. The same is true for places like Swarthmore or Brown.
@writingpumpkin03 : What percentage of the graduating class or classes at Williams College participated in the survey for the career center’s newsletter ?
There is a common impression about most of Williams and Amherst undergrads directly going to top grad schools and good number going to medical schools, 12% and 4% statistics is surprising.
@Riversider Well, if you consider the student body size (550), 12 percent of this student body amounts to 66 people and 12 percent is 22 people. That is pretty good imo. Also, a lot of people take gap years before medical school, so the 4 percent figure is likely much higher as it does not account for those taking 1-2 gap years prior to medical school matriculation, as far as I know. And in regards to graduate schools, the 12 percent probably refers to straight up PhD candidates. Another 14 percent does law/med, which is considered grad school, so that amounts to roughly 25 percent of the graduating class, a number around 138. And also, not everyone intends to do grad school, so that’s a fairly good number for the student body size.
@Riversider@Neurotic2027 To clarify, the 4% figure doesn’t include med school direct admits at all; these percentage breakdowns apply only to the 88% of students who go directly into the workforce. It’s more likely referring to students who go into public health administration, healthcare consulting, or something similar. Remember that a lot of prelaw/premed kids taking gap years teach in schools, which would account for the 15% working in education.
Also @Neurotic2027 what school did you end up committing to? I remember seeing your thread on your decision.
From the Williams website: More than 61% of the alumni from the classes of 1980 to 2000 have earned at least one graduate or professional degree. The most popular graduate disciplines for alumni are management, education, law, and health care.
I imagine that number will remain consistent going forward. So a HUGE number of folks take some, or often a lot, of time off before grad school. It’s notable that the top two graduate disciplines are management and education, as virtually everyone pursuing one of those degrees after Williams will first get some work experience. I think at least half of the people going to law school now take at least one year off, as well.
I’m not sure what people did 20 to 40 years ago is all that relevant to what grads do now. I expect many used to get grad degrees in journalism or law-now, not so much.
To continue @brantly and @RoverSally 's theme, the more crucial question is how long do they stay in finance/consulting? Those businesses are seen by American culture like New York City in the song: “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.” Many graduates go to do a tour of duty right after graduation to make money for grad school, see if it’s a business they want to stay in, figure out what they really want to do in their lives, get a line on the resume from McKinley or GS to prove their competency, make contacts for the future. Then they move on. There is tremendous attrition from finance/consulting, and for good reason. It’s a brutal business, bloodsport fun to some, and PTSD-inducing warfare to others. To Williams credit, our grads are seen as smart and ambitious enough to compete with the nation’s best for those spots. They don’t call WC the “West Point of Wall Street” for nothing. But don’t focus so much on how many go into it. Think about how many stay. I’m more impressed by those who leave and go on to more interesting, creative, and productive things.
This is why a liberal arts education is crucial: it gives you the tools to learn how to learn anything, and the confidence to explore different avenues at any time in your life. Flexibility of thought and ambition is what the future demands. Those bottom rung finance and consulting jobs have already started to shrink and will more in the next decade as industry relies more on artificial intelligence for grunt work and decision making. An LAC education provides the tools to know you can retool and reinvent yourself. I forgive those students who can’t turn down the siren song of money even though their hearts aren’t in it, when they have debts and responsibilities that only money can remedy. It’s a tough time to be a young person. Let’s see what else they eventual do with their lives given the chance.
I very much doubt that overall percentages of graduate education from changed much for Williams grads over the past 20-30 years (if anything, they’ve probably gone up, as the intellectual level of the student body has increased significantly since the 1980s and 1990s). The reason (I imagine) that the data on the Williams site goes back to older classes is that lots of people take significant time before starting graduate studies, and many graduate degrees (especially Phds) take many years to complete, so data from, say, the last few years would not be terribly relevant. More generally, the larger point is that while a very small percentage of Williams grads will go straight to grad school, many more will begin attending grad school in another year, two or three (or longer, typically, for MBA students). Indeed, from another page on the college site, 75 percent of Williams students begin graduate studies within five years of graduation, and I imagine an overwhelming majority of those who begin, ultimately earn such a degree:
Regarding consulting or investment banking, I do believe (and certainly this was the experience of my friends) a lot of grads go into these fields right out of college, but the vast majority use that as a launching point into some other field. Of my many friends who went into banking or consulting after college, only one remained in either of those fields for more than five years. For many, it’s a way to pay off some loans and/or live well in a cool city for a few years, while having a strong name brand job on your resume, before figuring out a long-term career plan.
@Ephman I know that computer science has been getting ridiculously popular at the college recently, and statistics from the career center have shown that most students now end up working in tech. Since computer science as a field generally doesn’t place as much emphasis on graduate degrees, do you think this may change the number of Williams students going to graduate school?