Options. People always say that after college, you have options. At Harvard, however, it seems that students choose to pursue a narrower range of paths than the world offers. At the end of each academic year, Harvard’s Office of Career Services (OCS) asks graduating students to take the Harvard College Senior Survey. The statistics from 2019, the most recent that the OCS released data, tell a story that differs from one of infinite options.
According to the 2019 Senior Survey, which asked the entire senior class of roughly 1500 students to respond, 16% of students said they planned to attend graduate or professional school in the fall after graduation. 13% said they would be working in financial services, 12% in technology or engineering, 10% in consulting, and another 10% in a government, military service, or nonprofit capacity. Altogether, this data suggests that over 60% of graduating seniors chose one of five paths after graduation. These are, of course, fairly broad fields. Not to mention, attending graduate school does not rule out the possibility of later working in any one of the other previously listed fields. Nonetheless, the 2019 Senior Survey suggests that Harvard students tend not to go into medicine or education, among other fields, and they instead prefer the realms of finance, technology, and consulting.
In some areas, the results from the 2019 Senior Survey are fairly representative of the past decade’s worth of responses to OCS’s Senior Survey. In 2012, the first year from which data is available, 11% of students reported that they would be working in financial services, and another 11% planned to work in consulting in the fall after graduation. Statistics from the 2015 survey tell the same story: for the same categories of financial services and consulting, the numbers are 13% and 10%, respectively.
However, it appears the percentage of students entering technology and engineering fields over the past decade has increased. In 2012, 5% of seniors reported that they would be working in this field after graduation. In 2013, 2014, and 2015, that percentage rose to 6%, 9%, and 11%, respectively. Since 2015, technology and engineering has remained a field in which about 10% of graduating seniors intend to work in the fall after graduation. Government, military, nonprofit, and non-governmental organization work also appears to have risen over time: in 2012, 5% of respondents said they would be working in these fields, whereas 6% and 7% said the same in 2015 and 2017.
Over the past decade, Harvard’s graduating seniors have become more and more concentrated into a few career areas, suggesting that maybe there should be an asterisk next to options. Maybe people should say that after college, you actually only have a few potential career paths. Or maybe people should say that you have a wide range of options, but you’ll likely only choose from a handful of the most popular ones.
Why do so many students end up in just a few fields? The financial incentive is clear; the most lucrative professions seemingly are the most coveted. In an ideal world, Harvard graduates would use the economic and social privileges earned from high-paying jobs in, say, finance, to turn around and help communities in need through nonprofit work or support for political candidates who could better their communities. The results from the 2019 Senior Survey suggest that a portion of Harvard students are already doing this work: with 10% of respondents planning to work in a government, military, or nonprofit capacity, some students are looking to directly serve their communities. An additional 10% of respondents indicated they would spend the following fall working in the healthcare industry or volunteering.
What does life at Harvard suggest about life after college? Another word that people use in this discussion is connections. Some people already come to Harvard with them; many form them while they’re here. In any case, they’re necessary for the world outside of college, a world for which college should prepare you. OCS reported that 79% of graduating seniors in 2019 had interned for at least one of their three summers before graduating. A microcosm of the workforce after graduation, internships reflect a pressing problem: there are only so many positions available. Still, just about 4 out of 5 survey respondents had an internship by the time they graduated.
Connections often make internships possible, and open doors to future jobs after graduation. These opportunities help students expand their pallets, explore new areas of interest, and ultimately make positive changes in the world. Options do exist—both today and tomorrow.
Oliver Adler ’24 (oliveradler@college.harvard.edu) wants to work as the taste-tester for a candy company after graduation.