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GROVE CITY COLLEGE PLACES 94 PERCENT OF GRADS IN 2011 |
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January 31, 2012
GROVE CITY, Pa. – Even in a down economy, Grove City College graduates boasted a 94 percent placement rate in jobs or graduate school within the first six months of graduation. The results, validated by a 95 percent response rate among recent graduates, point to the quality education of Grove City College students and dedicated work of the College’s Career Services Office.
“We are very proud of our students,” said Dr. Jim Thrasher ’80, director of career services and associate professor of biblical and religious studies and humanities. “Many of our students are competing against experienced candidates; our students are very well prepared.”
The Career Services Office equips students for success in entering the job market through early engagement, partnering with students as early as their freshman year. Through strategizing career options, networking, pursing internships that align with their professional aspirations and fine tuning interview skills, Grove City College students are impressing employers and landing job and internship opportunities.
“Employers are very satisfied with our students,” Thrasher said, citing the 218 corporate visits to campus in 2011, the most in the College’s history. “Corporations know they’re getting great students with managerial potential. I have never had a company come [to campus] and not find what they were looking for in 18 years.”
Top companies and organizations return to campus continually to recruit Grove City College students, including Microsoft, Intel, Ernst & Young, Bayer Corp., UPMC, FedEx, Xerox, PNC, Teach for America, Tyco International, Target, Northwestern Mutual, PPG Industries and Marathon Oil, as well as Bechtel Plant Machinery, Inc. and many more.
“I have had the opportunity to interview, hire and work with almost 50 individuals educated at Grove City College,” said Mike Stango, general manager, Bechtel Plant Machinery Inc. “These individuals have consistently demonstrated adherence to high moral values, outstanding initiative, excellent communication skills, individual ownership, personal accountability and an appetite for continuous personal improvement.”
The Career Services Office guides students to find meaning, satisfaction and purpose in the workforce, as well as to help build lifelong strategic job searching skills. The office’s goals have assisted in the remarkable placement rate of 2011 graduates, a statistic Thrasher believes parents and students must examine more carefully when deciding on a potential college or university.
Thrasher points at two components that tell the true story of a placement rate’s validity.
Today, many academic institutions calculate placement rate nine to 12 months after graduation and compare it alongside rates of colleges and universities like Grove City College that continue to use the standard six-month evaluation period. The lengthened timeframe allows a greater number of graduates to secure jobs, bolstering the perception of an institution’s placement numbers.
Thrasher stresses that response rate is also an essential component when determining the accuracy of a job placement rate. In higher education, job placement rates are too often devised from a small sample size of respondents. The data returned, sometimes collected from a response rate as low as 30 percent, is then passed as a fair representation of job placement for the institution’s entire graduating class.
To learn more about the Career Services Office, visit www2.gcc.edu/cso.
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