Help me decide: W&L (0k a year), URichmond (0k a year), Haverford (23k), Bowdoin (26k), Davidson (33), Middlebury (30k)

[jym626]

It bears Repeating that career outcome reports need to be carefully reviewed and taken in many cases with a large grain of salt.

Problems and limitations with College career outcome reports: reading between the lines

As students are weighing their college acceptances/choices, one of the variables frequently mentioned is the college’s career outcome report, to consider how many of the school’s graduates are employed and what are their average salaries (usually starting salaries, though some also look at later career grads). While these reports can be an interesting metric, one needs to do a deeper dive and to be careful to recognize the limits and potential flaws with these reports. First and foremost, it is limited by the # of students responding to the surveys. As this excellent article Colleges’ career success stats don’t tell the whole story about how their graduates are doing after they get their degree notes, “This is, perhaps, the greatest selling point for any institution of higher education. Students consistently say that finding a good-paying job is among the top reasons why they go to college. As scholars of career education, we believe it’s important for students and families to know …

Ditto for internship reports. One of my sons interned at two large well-known companies when he was an engineering undergrad. He chose two different internship opportunities to get a feel for these different sides of the industry. One of his classmates also interned at one of those companies, but she worked in HR. That could be misconstrued as someone thinking she had a different kind of internship.