What CMU reports about graduate destinations
CMU’s Career and Professional Development Center publishes first-destination outcomes for graduates from the Classes of 2021 to 2025. The dashboard covers categories such as employment, continuing education, employers, job titles, industries, salary and location. The undergraduate admissions cost page reports a university headline: 91% of the Class of 2025 were employed or continuing education within six months of graduation, with an average starting salary of $116,882. Keep the two measures separate and attribute them to CMU. They describe recent reported outcomes, not a placement guarantee, a salary promise or a forecast for a particular student.
Read cohort and survey coverage
The CPDC defines a graduating class by degree completion from July 1 through June 30; its Class of 2025 covers completers from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. First-destination activity captures initial plans up to six months after May graduation. CPDC collects survey responses and career-consultant outreach and may use information from employers, departments, faculty and public sources. It defines knowledge rate as the share of graduates for whom the university has reasonable and verifiable information. When comparing an outcome percentage, check the dashboard’s selected cohort, school, category and knowledge rate. Missing information is not the same as a negative outcome.
Do not mix university and school-level outcomes
The CPDC page says its university-wide survey excludes Heinz College and Tepper graduate students. Its dashboard may offer school, department, degree and visa-status filters; the scope of each statistic should be read from the selected view. CMU’s own admissions summary headline and the CPDC dashboard may use different denominators or measures. A school employment report can focus on a narrower class, job-seeking graduates, or responses at a different reporting date. Do not combine a school’s offer rate with a university outcome rate, or apply undergraduate figures to graduate students. If a programme-specific figure is unavailable, say so instead of substituting a broader statistic.
Salary and destination definitions affect the meaning
CPDC’s median base-salary definition applies to employed respondents and excludes internships, military service, part-time roles and employment outside the United States. It excludes bonuses, options and other compensation, and extreme outliers are removed from average and median calculations. The $116,882 figure on CMU’s cost-and-aid page is described as an average starting salary for the Class of 2025, not the CPDC median base salary. The figures are not interchangeable. Career outcomes also include continuing education, seeking work, entrepreneurship, freelance work and other activities; the headline ‘employed or continuing education’ is only one grouping.
Use placements data in a programme decision
Use CMU outcomes as one part of a decision alongside curriculum, school-specific cost, student support, location and personal goals. For a fair comparison with another university, align graduating class, reporting window, cohort scope, knowledge rate, outcome category, salary statistic and geography. International applicants should separately check work authorisation; an employment outcome does not prove that a student had or will have permission to work. Career dashboards can reveal where respondents went, but they cannot predict an individual result or guarantee a particular employer, salary or visa outcome. Reopen the live dashboard before making a decision because the CPDC refreshes its data annually.
A careful comparison workflow
A short comparison worksheet can prevent misleading conclusions. For every published figure, record the source page, the cohort year, the date on which you viewed it, the population included, the survey or knowledge rate if supplied, the reporting window, and the outcome definition. Keep employment, continuing education, seeking work and other destinations separate unless the source explicitly combines them. If a report gives a median salary, check the covered geography and whether it is base salary or total compensation. Do not infer that an advertised employer recruited a stated number of students unless the report supplies that count.
Before comparing CMU with another programme, look for reports from the same graduating year and the same student level. Undergraduate and graduate outcomes can reflect very different labour markets, and a university-wide measure may combine disciplines with distinct recruiting patterns. If one school publishes an employment rate for job-seeking respondents and another institution publishes an outcome rate for all graduates, explain the difference instead of treating the percentages as equivalent. If you cannot verify the denominator from the source, leave the statistic out of a numeric comparison.
For an individual plan, use placement reporting to generate questions for the department: what roles do alumni pursue, which skills does the curriculum develop, what internships or projects are part of the programme, and what support is available to international students? These are questions to investigate with current school materials and advisers, not claims that a chart alone can answer. Recheck the live CPDC dashboard because it can add new cohorts and filters. Preserve the page’s date and the precise filters used so that later changes are visible. Keep a copy of the source’s labels rather than paraphrasing an outcome category from memory. Terms such as “seeking,” “known plans,” “knowledge rate” and “employed” can have precise definitions in a methodology note. A comparison should state when categories differ and avoid silently counting unknown outcomes as unemployed or employed. If a dashboard allows filters, note which were selected; a filtered subgroup may be useful for a focused question but should not be presented as the university-wide result.