Outcomes: Careers After Cornell

For the past five years, a majority of graduates have entered or been seeking to enter the workforce upon graduation, while about 1/3 enter or prepare to apply for graduate school. Most Cornellians applying to law school apply a few years after college, usually within one to three years of graduation. The majority of Cornellians applying to medical school take 1-2 gap years after graduation, meaning that they apply as a senior or one year after graduation.  This is increasingly common with other graduate and professional programs as well.

Graduates of A&S find success at organizations across the world in a diverse array of career fields: from technology, law, and finance to communications, government, and nonprofits. Similarly, A&S graduates pursue a bright diversity of graduate degrees after finishing their undergrad degrees here. A&S graduates find success in fields like computer science, medicine, mathematics, social sciences, fine arts, business management, law, engineering, and more at schools like Columbia, Georgetown, Brown, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Oxford, Penn, UCLA, Tufts, and Cornell.

Cornell University conducts an annual survey of the postgraduate activities of our graduates. The reports provided represent first-destinations as reported by students. Graduates of the College of Arts & Sciences go on to prestigious graduate programs, advanced professional degrees or directly into challenging and rewarding careers.

Overall reports for each major are available for survey years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 (currently being updated). Major reports may include data from multiple graduating classes depending on the number of graduates.

• For majors with 50+ respondents in the most recent year, we provide percentages for the most recent year.
• For majors with 50+ respondents in the last 5 years, we provide percentages for the last 5 years.
• For majors with <50 respondents in the last 5 years, we provide descriptive information, but no percentages.

View and download college and major reports

If you need accessible versions of any of these documents, please contact as_communication@cornell.edu. You will receive a response within 2 business days.

78% of the Class of 2022 responded to the survey. (n=917)

Primary Status	Percentage
Employed	68%
Attending Graduate School	28%
Seeking Employment	3%
Other Endeavors*	1%

* Other Endeavors includes preparing for graduate school, traveling, volunteering, time off.

EMPLOYMENT DETAILS

Class of 2022 graduates reported entering 19 unique sectors following graduation.  Sectors not listed below had <1% of the graduating class employed.

Employment Sector	Percentage
Financial Services	18%
Technology	17%
Consulting/Professional Practice	15%
Education	10%
Human Healthcare Services	9%
Other Nonprofit Organization	5%
Government	5%
Law	4%
Communications/Media Other Manufacturing	3% 3% 2%
Biotechnology/Pharmaceuticals/Life Sciences	2%

Salary

• Average: $78,200
• High: $175,000
• Median: $76,000

Top employers

Top Companies who hired Cornellians. 394 unique employers hired Class of 2022 graduates.

1. Goldman Sachs 
2. Google
2. Meta
4. EY
4. Weill Cornell Medicine
6. Amazon
6. Cornell University
8. Deloitte Consulting
9. JP Morgan Chase & Co.
9. KPMG
9. Microsoft
9. National Institutes of Health

Other sample employers

•    Apple

•    Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

•    Community Volunteers in Medicine

•    Conde Nast

•    Creative Artists Agency (CAA)

•    C-SPAN

•    Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

•    Democratic Governors Association

•   DraftKings

•    Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme

•    Louisiana Supreme Court

•    NASA

•    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

•    The Institute of International Law and Human Rights

• White & Case

GRADUATE SCHOOL DETAILS

Class of 2022 graduates reported entering 91 unique graduate fields following graduation.

Graduate Field	Percentage
Law	15%
Computer Science	14%
Information Science	6%
Physics	6%
Medicine	5%
Mathematics	3%
Public Health	3%
Chemistry	2%
Engineering Management	2%
Film & Video Studies	2%
Nursing	2%

DEGREE TYPES PURSUED

Degree Type	Percentage
PhD	22%
MEng	16%
JD	15%
MS	11%
MPS	8%
MA	7%
MD	5%
MPH	4%
MFA	3%

Sample Graduate Schools Attended:

Class of 2022 graduates reported attending 85 unique graduate institutions.

•    California Institute of Technology
•    Carnegie Mellon University
•    Cornell University
•    Columbia University in the City of New York
•    Duke University
•    Emory University
•    Georgetown University
•    Harvard University
•    London School of Economics
•    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
•    McGill University
•    New York University
•    Princeton University
•    Stanford University
•    University of California-Los Angeles
•    University of Cambridge
•    University of Chicago
•    University of California-Berkeley
•    University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
•    University of Oxford
•    Vanderbilt University
•    Yale University

PRE-PROFESSIONAL 2022 DATA

Pre-Law Students:

Top Law Schools for Class of 2022

• Cornell University
• Harvard University
• Columbia University in the City of New York
• New York University
• Duke University

Pre-Med Students:

Top Medical Schools for Class of 2022

• Brown University
• Hofstra University
• New York University
• University of Rochester
• Weill Cornell Medicine