By Dr. Claire Klieger
Working with liberal arts students, I love looking at the data of what our students do after they graduate. Each year, the paths embarked upon by our students are as diverse as they are impressive and continually go to show that you can do anything with a liberal arts degree from Penn!
We’ve just finished our report on first destinations for the Class of 2014 and it’s really interesting to see all of the neat things members of that class are doing. You can see the full report on our website, but here are some highlights:
- Most CAS grads from 2014 are working full-time (61%), in 29 different countries. The most popular industries were financial services (18%), consulting (16%) and education (14%). Top employers included the University of Pennsylvania and Teach for America, as well as top banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays), consulting firms (BCG, Deloitte, Bain&Co.) and a range of other name brand employers (NIH, NBCUniversal, LinkedIn, IBM and Nielsen to name a few).
- Slightly fewer students went straight on to graduate school (17%) as compared with the Class of 2013 (20%), which is likely a sign of the improving economy. For those entering graduate or professional school, Medicine (22%), Law (16%) and Science (16%) continue to be the most popular fields of study.
- While many students had offers in the fall semester (38%), the majority of College students received their offers of employment in spring semester of year senior year (39%) or even after graduation (23%). This stat reflects the diversity of hiring timelines that coincide with the breadth of industries into which liberal arts students enter.
- Students continue to heavily use the resources of our office. 68% of those working full-time or attending graduate school reported using Career Services and 40% of employed students received their offers through OCR or other career services leads.
