Ambiguity in MIT Senior Survey

[UMTYMP_student]

<p>In the 2011 (and previous years as well) MIT Graduating Senior’s Survey, it states

• More than half of baccalaureate and 81.4 percent of master’s graduates planned to enter the workforce immediately following graduation, an increase for both groups over last year. Nearly 40 percent of baccalaureate and 12.4 percent of master’s graduates planned to attend graduate or professional school. This represents a slight decline in immediate graduate school attendance from the prior year.
• At the time of graduation, 79.8 percent of graduating seniors and 75.8 percent of master’s graduates had accepted employment, and increase of 3.2% and 4.3% respectively compared to 2010 findings.

</p>

<p>Later it backs up the first bullet point (page 5) with 52.2% students working, 39.2% of students going to graduate/professional school and 8.5% after at graduation. I’m not sure what the difference is with the second bullet point other than they give very different numbers. If someone could clear this up it would be much appreciated.</p>

[molliebatmit]

<p>My read on the second bullet point is that 79.8% of those graduates who intended to enter the workforce had accepted employment by the time of graduation. I agree it’s unclear.</p>

[UMTYMP_student]

<p>That interpretation makes some sense but of the 60.7% of students not going to graduate/professional school 52.2/60.7=86% had employment at graduation.</p>

<p>Even more confusingly the definition of other seems to have possibly changed from 2010 to 2011. For the 2010 survey <a href=“http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/graduation10.pdf[/url]”>http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/graduation10.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, “Other includes enrolled in another educational program (2nd bachelors degree), distinguished fellowship, taking time off, traveling, deciding between fields, volunteer activity, still looking for a job, undecided & other activity” (page 4). While for the 2011 survey <a href=“http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/GSS2011.pdf[/url]”>http://gecd.mit.edu/sites/default/files/GSS2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, “Other includes enrolled in another educational program (2nd bachelors degree), distinguished fellowship, taking time off, traveling, deciding between fields, volunteer activity, postponing job search, undecided & other activity”. Crucially “still looking for a job” is replaced by “postponing job search”. Given that the number stayed relatively constant and the small differences are probably due to macroeconomic trends it seems like the actual definition of the other category didn’t change so I’m not sure what to make of the change in definition.</p>