The data

This data represents all undergraduates who graduated between 2019 - 2021.

Where does the data come from?

The Destination of Leavers Survey from Higher Education (DLHE) was superseded by a new centralised Graduate Outcomes Survey in 2018-19. This new survey had its first release of graduate employment and destination outcomes in June 2020. The release was classified by HESA as experimental data and comparison cannot be drawn to the previous DLHE information that was held. Every Higher Education institution in the UK is required to take part in the survey and provide contact details to HESA to enable them to conduct the survey. The data is collected on a rolling basis every three months capturing graduates destinations approximately 15 months after they have graduated. The survey captures both undergraduate and postgraduate activity. 

The information in this section records the destination returns for the undergraduates who graduated between 1 May - 31 July 2019, 1 May – 31 July 2020 and 1 May – 31 July 2021.

What can I find in this section?

The data in this section outlines what Imperial graduates move on to following graduation including overall undergraduate destinations statistics and individual destinations data by Imperial department.The data was collected 15 months after graduating. We will continue to add new data to this section each year.

How the data is presented: 

All data presented here has been subject to HESA rounding methodology in order to reduce the risk of identifying individuals from published figures. In short, the rounding methodology involves rounding all figures to the nearest 5 individuals and suppressing percentages derived from base sizes of fewer than 22.5 individuals. This may result in the information for some departments being unavailable, and in some cases, totals of 99% or 101%.

If you have any enquiries about destinations of Imperial students, please email us.

Graduate Outcomes tabs

Overall destinations (2019-21)

Destination of Leavers from the Graduate Outcomes Survey (Home, EU and Overseas):

In 2021:

  • 63% of all graduates had entered employment
  • 25% had engaged in a course of study, training or research
  • 3% were unemployed and looking for work
  • 3% were doing something else
  • 2% were taking time out to travel (this does not include short-term holidays)
  • 1% were self-employment/freelancing
  • 1% were in voluntary/unpaid work for an employer
  • 1% were running their own business
  • 1% were developing a creative, artistic or professional portfolio
  • 0% were caring for someone (unpaid); and 0.1% were retired.

Bar chart showing the results of the undergraduate collection of the new Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) for 2021 in comparison with 2020 and 2019 results. 

Industry sectors (2019-21)

Graph 2: Comparison of Industry Sector Entered (Home, EU and Overseas):

In 2020:

  • 0% entered agriculture, forestry and fisheries
  • 1.4% entered mining and quarrying; 8.9% entered manufacture
  • 1% entered electric, gas and water
  • 1.1% entered construction
  • 3.5% entered wholesale and retail trade
  • 0.8% entered transport and storage
  • 0.4% entered accommodation and food services
  • 17.8% entered information and communications
  • 14.1% entered financial and insurance
  • 0.3% entered real estate
  • 19.5% entered professional, scientific and technical activities
  • 0.3% entered admin and support services
  • 2% entered public admin and defence
  • 3.7% entered education
  • 18.8% entered human health and social works
  • 0.4% entered arts, entertainment and recreation
  • 6.4% entered other services
  • 0% were not coded

‌Bar chart showing the industry sectors entered by all graduates surveyed in the new Graduate Outcomes Survey (GOS) for 2020 in comparison with 2018 and 2019 results. 

 

By department (2019-21)

AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING

BIOENGINEERING

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

CHEMISTRY

  • Chemistry tables 2021 [PDF] - text-only tables for undergraduate employment/further study destinations

CIVIL ENGINEERING

COMPUTING

  • Computing tables 2021 ‌[PDF] - text-only tables for undergraduate employment/further study destinations

DYSON DESIGN ENGINEERING

  • Data not available

EARTH SCIENCE and ENGINEERING

  • Data not available

ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING

LIFE SCIENCES

MATERIALS

  • Materials tables 2021 [PDF] - text-only tables for undergraduate employment/further study destinations

MATHEMATICS

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

MEDICINE 

  • Medicine tables 2021 ‌[PDF] - text-only tables for undergraduate employment/further study destinations

PHYSICS

  • Physics tables 2021 [PDF] - text-only tables for undergraduate employment/further study destinations