95% of Yale-NUS College graduates find employment within six months

Fresh graduates from Yale-NUS College’s Class of 2019 are highly sought-after, with 95.8 percent among those in the labour force[1] employed[2] within six months of completing their final examinations. The median gross monthly salary[3] of Yale-NUS graduates in 2019 was S$3,800, which is 2.7 percent higher than that in 2018.  This is based on the latest Joint Autonomous Universities Graduate Employment Survey 2019 which was conducted by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the other Autonomous Universities (AUs) in Singapore.

According to the survey, the median gross starting salary of full-time permanently employed Yale-NUS graduates with Bachelor of Science with Honours degrees was S$5,000 (up 4.2 percent from S$4,800 in 2018), while that for graduates with Bachelor of Arts with Honours degrees was S$3,684 (up 1.5 percent from S$3,630 in 2018). For more details on the gross starting salaries of Yale-NUS graduates, please click here.

145 out of a total of 170 fresh graduates participated in the joint survey.

Yale-NUS graduates went into diverse industries, which include the public sector, consulting, financial services, education, information & communication technology, and scientific/industrial research.

Professor Tan Tai Yong, President of Yale-NUS, said, “I am heartened that our third batch of graduates continue to do well after they leave the College – be it contributing to industry or pursuing graduate studies. Their critical thinking and empathetic communication skills honed at Yale-NUS, combined with the adaptability and adventurous spirit nurtured through our residential college programme, makes them well equipped to bring about meaningful change in whichever field they enter.  I look forward to seeing them contribute in their chosen paths.”

Yale-NUS offers a distinctive curriculum that promotes broad-based interdisciplinary learning across the arts, humanities, and natural and social sciences complemented by the depth of expertise in one’s core major. A key part of the Yale-NUS education is ensuring that students have a wide range of experiences and a global portfolio of opportunities. Such opportunities enhance their academic learning, broaden their perspectives, and hone the skills and character they need to succeed as students today and leaders tomorrow. One of Yale-NUS’s distinct qualities is the close-knit residential community which encourages exploration, engagement and interactivity among our highly diverse and globally representative student body across all four years of College life.

Mr Daniel Lok, who graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Mathematical, Computational and Statistical Sciences, works as a software engineer in Facebook Singapore. He said that his experience at Yale-NUS has enabled and encouraged him to think about and engage with important social issues as products in software engineering can have potentially massive social reach. “Yale-NUS has equipped me with the technical skills I’ll need, but that is something that many universities can offer. The unique thing about Yale-NUS’s curriculum and culture is that it has fundamentally shaped the way I think about the world around me, and my relationship to it,” said Mr Lok.

Another fresh graduate, Mr Dhivesh Dadlani, works as a business analyst at Digital McKinsey, part of McKinsey & Company. While his Economics major has provided him with quantitative skills that are useful at McKinsey, it is the access to the diversity of opinions at the College that honed his skills at approaching complex issues. “Yale-NUS has taught me how to listen and engage with an issue even when my peers are approaching it from different perspectives. I feel that this is important in consulting, where we need to understand many stakeholders’ opinions and leverage different perspectives of our team members to solve complex problems,” said Mr Dadlani.

Some Yale-NUS graduates are working in the public service such as Ms Hazirah Binte Mohamad Helmy, a History major who is now pursuing her postgraduate diploma in education at the National Institute of Education (NIE) before becoming a teacher. At Yale-NUS, Ms Hazirah served as a Residential College Advisor, a role in the residential community where appointed senior students provide care and guidance to a group of assigned first-year students. She felt the experience trained her to be flexible in responding to different situations in her role as a teacher. She said, “Yale-NUS has given me some really valuable experiences and perspectives that I hope I can share with my students.”

Besides graduates who have entered the workplace, other Yale-NUS graduates have also gone on to different pathways such as fellowships and graduate schools. The Class of 2019 has produced a Yenching Scholar and a Schwarzman Scholar, both highly selective graduate scholarships. Global Affairs major Ms Helena Auerswald was the first Yale-NUS student to be selected as a Yenching Scholar, a highly competitive scholarship awarded to approximately 125 students each year. She is now pursuing a Master’s degree programme in China Studies at the Yenching Academy of Peking University in China. Mr Daniel Ng, who graduated from Yale-NUS’s Double Degree Programme in Liberal Arts and Law, was the first Singaporean student from a Singapore university to become a Schwarzman Scholar. He is now pursuing a Master of Global Affairs degree at Tsinghua University in China. Thereafter, he will begin his training contract with Clifford Chance Asia and take the Singapore bar examinations before practising law.

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[1] Graduates in the labour force refer to graduates who are either employed (i.e. working) or unemployed (i.e. not working but actively looking and available for a job).

[2] Employment refers to graduates working on a full-time permanent, part-time, temporary employment or freelancing basis.

[3] Gross Monthly Salary comprises basic salary, fixed allowances, over-time pay, commissions and other regular cash payments, before deduction of the employee’s CPF contributions and personal income tax. Employer’s CPF contributions, bonuses, stock options, other lump sum payments and payments-in-kind are excluded.

For more information on our graduates, please visit https://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/profiles-of-class-of-2019-graduates/

For media enquiries, please contact publicaffairs@yale-nus.edu.sg