Zoe Berg, Senior Photographer

The Yale Office of Career Strategy in conjunction with Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science  recently published a report on the post-graduation intentions of the Yale College undergraduate class of 2021 in SEAS programs.  

The report — entitled the “SEAS First Destinations” site — is a visualization of a subset of data taken from a larger OCS report on the first destinations of the entire Yale College Class of 2021. OCS was able to gather data on 86.8 percent of the Class of 2021. The “SEAS First Destinations” site reports data on employment location, the most commonly-attended universities, size of employer, salary, job satisfaction, most common employers and the most commonly-pursued advanced degrees. All of these metrics can additionally be broken down by any particular SEAS major. 

“The last few years, we’ve been tracking that tech has been outpaying other industries,” Jeanine Dames, director of the OCS, said.

According to the report, the mean starting salary of the Class of 2021 was $76,359 among those employed within the United States. SEAS graduates outpaced this figure with a median starting salary of $98,750 and a mean starting salary of $111,606. 

According to Dames, finance seems to be the only other industry paying similarly high salaries to Yale graduates. She said that it may be possible that these industries are competing over the same pool of Yale graduates.

The site categorizes employment data by function and industry. The data reported under “Function” details the type of job an employee is hired for, while data reported under “Industry” lists the financial sector in which their work takes place. An electrical engineer working for Pfizer, for example, would be categorized as an engineer for function and listed under healthcare for industry.

Engineering, software development, consulting, finance and project management comprise the top five most popular types of employment functions listed on the site. Even though there were a large percentage of SEAS majors interested in healthcare, the data was surveyed immediately after graduation, so none of the graduates pursuing a doctorate or masters in public health would be reflected in the data.

Of the different types of industries available, technology, engineering, finance, consulting and healthcare are most common. 

“The enrollment in the sciences and engineering has increased over the last decade,” Vincent Wilczynski, deputy dean of Yale SEAS, said. “Within the School of Engineering, it has increased. And one of the driving factors is that computer science continues to be popular.”

About 40 percent of SEAS graduates’ job offers are received during September or October. According to Dames, this is likely because large tech companies anticipate hiring needs 10 months in advance, which would result in a September or October offer. She also stated that it is likely that most job offers made during September or October were done so immediately following an internship.

Approximately 80 percent of 2021 SEAS graduates chose to work for corporations with more than 500 employees. However, according to the most recent OCS “Four-Year Look” report which surveys Yale College graduates after 4 years,  just 47.5 percent of graduates remain in corporations of that size after four years.

“I think what’s particularly interesting when you look at the four year out, is we slowly see a little bit of a move away from the big employers,” Dames said.

Among the advanced degrees pursued, 63.2 percent of graduates are working towards their doctoral degrees, 15.8 percent of graduates are pursuing a professional doctorate degree and the remaining graduates are pursuing a masters degree. According to Laurie Coppola, senior associate director of OCS, one possible explanation for the high number of graduates pursuing doctoral degrees stems from Biomedical engineering majors.

“I would say probably half of the BME [Biomedical Engineering] majors start out with a pre-med interest,” said Laurie Coppola.

Biomedical engineering majors accounted for 100 percent of those pursuing a professional doctorate degree, according to the report, while Environmental Sciences majors represented the only other SEAS majors to pursue advanced degrees pertaining to health. It was found that 100 percent of environmental science majors pursuing an advanced degree are pursuing a masters in public health, regardless of the type of environmental science, such as chemical, electrical, environmental and mechanical.

Overall, Johns Hopkins was the most attended university for SEAS majors post graduation. MIT, Brown, Stanford and Yale followed behind. Computer science and mathematics majors were particularly likely to enroll in Johns Hopkins, but removing that major from the dataset, MIT becomes the most attended university. 

The online report does not contain data about the specific number of SEAS graduates. The report visualization is available online at the SEAS website, and the full report can be obtained upon request via emailing the OCS.

JAMES STEELE