Committee On Career Exploration and Services

Final Report of the
Career Exploration and Services Committee
Preamble
The following represents the final report of the Career Exploration and Services Committee. This
report was submitted in a draft form to Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz in October 2019. Since that
time, the report has been briefed to many groups at MIT from students to academic administrators
to deans and provosts. Further, many of the report’s recommendations have already begun to be
acted upon.
Then, starting in Spring 2020, the Institute has been dealing with the impacts of the COVID
pandemic. Among the impacts with respect to career exploration: (1) much of the work on the
report’s recommendations needed to be put on hold, and (2) some significant changes, at least for
now, had to be made to career exploration opportunities. For example, all career fairs since the
early Spring have been virtual. In particular, the 2020 Fall Career Fair was broken into several
more focused virtual fairs spread throughout the Fall semester. We believe this experience is
likely to accelerate some of the changes that already were occurring more gradually prior to
COVID, e.g. the use of virtual recruiting by employers.
As the report of this committee was effectively complete prior to these events, we have not altered
the report to account for them (beyond the addition of this preamble). Our belief is that the
findings and recommendations very much remain correct. Further, we expect that as we enter a
“new normal”, reflection will naturally occur about the implications of our experiences on
improving career exploration and career services for all of our students.
Executive Summary
In February 2018, Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz convened a Student Career Exploration and Services
Committee “to review aspects and activities associated with student career exploration and
services, and to identify changes that would enhance exploration of, and access to, a broad range
of careers in a manner that best serves student needs” (Committee Charge, Appendix A). The
committee membership included faculty, staff, and students (both graduate and undergraduate)
from across the Institute. Drawing on extensive reviews of existing programs and practices,
internal and external research, and consultation with a variety of stakeholders across campus, we
offer the following findings and recommendations.
While important programs and assistance are already in place to provide career guidance, much
more needs to be done to better serve our students across not only the range of disciplines but
also with an eye toward graduate school and work in non-profit and public sectors. Given broader
national conversations taking place around career development and student support, MIT in
particular has an opportunity to provide real leadership in setting policies and practices that are
focused on enriching student experience. At the core, we recommend a holistic and sustained
approach to exploration that recognizes a diversity of interests, career paths, and needs.
Principles and Objectives for Career Exploration and Career Services at MIT
The following principles form a foundation for MIT career exploration and services:
● It is central to the Institute’s mission

● It is a shared and collaborative responsibility
● It requires student ownership
● It must support the diversity of our student backgrounds, identities, and interests
● It must strive for excellence and leadership
● It must incorporate learning by doing
We recommend that MIT adopt four objectives for career exploration and career services.
● Foster in all students the career development skills to support a lifelong ability to work
wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.
● Enable effective career exploration for all students.
● Advocate on behalf of all students for equity in career exploration and career opportunities
through engagement with external stakeholders such as employers, professional schools,
graduate programs, fellowships and more.
● Employ a continuous improvement process that includes assessment of measurable

outcomes for career exploration and career services that reflect our principles and
objectives.
Key Findings
● Peers matter. For all students (independent of undergraduate, masters, or doctoral level) ,
peers are reported to be by far the most consistently utilized and useful information source
for career exploration. Across all levels and across all programs, 90% or more of students
utilize peers and have found the information useful.
● Gender matters. Gendered differences exist for undergraduate and masters in student
perception of their ability to explore their careers. In particular, women report higher
levels of dissatisfaction with career exploration. At all levels (undergraduate, masters, and
doctoral), gendered differences exist within some departments and programs.
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● Department matters. For all students, significant department-to-department and
program-to-program variability exists in students' perceived ability to explore their
careers.
● Under-served career trajectories. Undergraduate student satisfaction with career

exploration is significantly tied to their current plans following graduation. Students
planning on immediately joining the workforce upon graduation (including military) are
more satisfied with the opportunities for career exploration than those considering
graduate school or who are unsure or undecided about what to do next.
● Importance of internships for graduate exploration. Approximately 70% of graduate

students (both masters and doctoral) are interested in having one or more internship
experiences. This is not surprising given that for the approximately 30% of our students
that have had graduate student internships, these experiences have had a wide variety of
reported positive impacts on career and professional development for both masters and
doctoral levels. Yet serious issues persist. Doctoral students report experiencing significant
barriers to internships due to research and programmatic requirements as well as a lack of
knowledge of internship opportunities. For international students (masters and doctoral),
50% report immigration issues as being a significant barrier (and another 30% somewhat
of a barrier).
Key Recommendations
● Create a Committee on Student Career Exploration and Development. We strongly

recommend the creation of a Committee for Student Career Exploration and Development
composed of faculty, CAPD and other staff, students, and alumni to help elevate the
importance and significance of career exploration to an MIT education. The committee
would be charged with ensuring a holistic oversight of career exploration and
development, including, critically, career fairs. The oversight role should include the
implementation of an Institute-wide continuous improvement process for career
exploration. With respect to career fairs, this committee would be able to set standards,
avoid duplication of objectives and target audience, and ensure that revenues generated
through career exploration events are utilized to support career exploration. CAPD staff
are a critical component of this proposed committee providing the professional expertise
around career exploration and career services.
etter support is needed for undergraduates who

● Support Exploration for Graduate School. B
are considering an advanced degree. At the Fall Career Fair, we support having a
significant UROP presence from both on-campus (e.g. have booths for departments,
programs, or labs offering UROPs, in addition to the UROP Office) as well as off-campus
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(e.g. UROP program offices from peer institutions). Similarly, graduate schools from
on-campus and off-campus should be included at this Fall Fair. In addition, we recommend
funding to assist students pursuing research-related experiences, and the development and
incentivization of new career exploration opportunities that are graduate school focused
within specific departments and domains.
● Reset the Career Exploration Timeline. I n the interest of fostering a more holistic
orientation around career exploration, in particular for first-year students, we recommend
the Fall Career Fair be moved to the end of October and that curated exploration events
happen before it occurs.
To support this change, we acknowledge a systemic change has to occur at the recruiting
level to make space for meaningful exploration. We recommend that MIT take leadership in
mobilizing peer institutions to push back on the aggressive and early student hiring
practices. We suggest advocating for later offer commitment dates for full-time and
short-term internships (nominally 4 months prior to start date). We believe students
should be granted automatic extensions to offer letters when they are also considering
graduate school or non-profit/civic sector work. To balance potential new burdens on
employers with these kinds of shifts we could see a system that also requires students to
limit the number of open offers they have.
● Expand Career Exploration Opportunities. D evelop new and continue to support existing
effective career exploration opportunities with a specific focus on: creating opportunities
to learn about a range of careers; fostering career development skills; and providing low
commitment opportunities to “prototype” different paths. Further, consider the
development of a focal point event for career exploration at MIT, i.e. a Career Exploration
Conference. This conference would serve all students across levels (undergraduate,
masters, and doctorates), interests, disciplines, backgrounds, etc.
● Create a Career Exploration Hub. Information about career exploration is spread across the
Institute in a confusing array of resources that students (and support members) must
traverse to learn about relevant opportunities. We recommend the creation of a
centralized career exploration platform organized by CAPD to address all stakeholder
challenges such as posting and finding career related opportunities. The platform should be
accessible by all administrators, faculty, employers, students, and student organization
leaders and promote a wide array of career exploration events, services, and resources to
support MIT students at all levels, degrees and career interests. All stakeholders offering
career exploration opportunities should be expected to contribute and use the centralized
platform.
● Adopt a Career and Professional Development Requirement for Graduate Students. G raduate
students should be encouraged to consider a wide range of career exploration and
professional development opportunities during their studies. To do this, we recommend
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that all programs adopt a flexible career and professional development requirement for
graduate students with an approximate load of 1 unit for masters and 2 units for doctoral
students. While we envision one option to satisfy this requirement is to perform an
industry, government or academic internship, many other options are possible depending
on the interests of the individual student. Regardless of the specific option, we would
encourage that a short self-reflective report be a part of the requirement. An example of
such a requirement may be found in the Professional Perspective Graduate Requirement in
EECS, which is mandatory for all graduate students in EECS.
● Increase Alumni Engagement. Alumni represent a powerful bridge between our current
students and future careers. More can be done to strengthen and support this connection.
We recommend increasing support for, and development of, opportunities for MIT alumni
to engage in student career exploration and development. Their involvement is critical to
developing the range of services and advisement needed to not only help students envision
paths (some of which they might never have explored) but also reduce the chance of
students making career decisions based on limited exposure and knowledge.
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary
1. A Vision for Career Exploration at MIT
2. Current State
3. Career-related Fairs
4. Career Exploration Events
5. Career Exploration Hub
6. Graduate Student Internships
7. Alumni Engagement
Appendix
Appendix A: Committee Charge and Membership
Appendix B: Catalog of Career Exploration Committee Recommendations
Appendix C: Undergraduate Career Exploration and Service Needs
Appendix D: Graduate Student Career Exploration and Service Needs Literature Review
Appendix E: Analysis of Gendered Differences
Appendix F: Measurable Outcomes for Career Exploration and Career Services at MIT
Appendix G: 2017 Career Exploration Survey Analysis
Appendix H: Ivy + Alumni/ae Engagement
Appendix I: Employer Engagement Survey
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1. A Vision for Career Exploration at MIT
“The goals of the MIT Committee on Student Career Exploration and Services are to review aspects
and activities associated with student career exploration and services, and to identify changes that
would enhance exploration of, and access to, a broad range of careers in a manner that best
serves student needs.” (From the Committee’s charge from Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz. See
Appendix A).
What is a career and what does career exploration mean? Through the Committee’s work since
early 2018, we have come to think of a career holistically, meaning that a career is the lifelong use
of a person’s skills, knowledge, and experiences. While a person may have many professions (both
sequentially and concurrently) throughout their life, we each have a single career in that life. As
such, we view career exploration as much more than a current student exploring a range of
professions, or searching for a first job in a profession. Rather, career exploration critically
encompasses developing a foundation of skills and knowledge to help support lifelong
decision-making about one’s career.
In this report, we will use the following definitions for a variety of career-related terms:
● Career: The lifelong use of your skills, knowledge, and experiences.
● Job: One person in one position doing a set of tasks.
● Occupation: A definable work activity or field found in many locations.
● Profession: An occupation requiring significant training.
● Professional development: The process of attaining and strengthening skills needed to

maintain currency and/or advance in a profession.
● Career development: The lifelong process of setting (and re-setting) career-related goals
and planning a route to achieve those goals.
● Career-related opportunities: Any events, panels, workshops, internships, fairs and more
that give students access to information about their career.
For this report keep in mind that career exploration is a widely-used concept in literature
related to vocational behaviors and is defined as: the purposeful behavior to access information
that is new to the individual about one’s career (see for example, Stumpf et. al. 1983). This
information can be over a wide range of career-related topics including not only types of jobs,
occupations, and professions but also, critically, career development (e.g. strategies for
recognizing, setting, and re-evaluating career goals). Clearly, significant overlap exists between
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career exploration and career development. Career services, by contrast, are resources to assist
individuals in developing, evaluating, and/or implementing career goals and plans.
In this introductory section, we recommend a set of principles and objectives, which together form
our vision for career exploration and services at MIT. Further, in Appendix D: Measurable
Outcomes, we propose a set of measurable outcomes which can help track achievement of this
vision.
Our Principles
We begin with the principles which underpin MIT’s objectives in career exploration and career
services. We note that these principles closely align with the principles of an MIT education as
described in the Final Report of the Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education
(2014). Specifically, our recommendation is that MIT adopt the following principles with respect
to career exploration and career services:
1. Central to our mission. Career development is an integral part of an MIT education. The
importance of preparing students for their careers (i.e. career development) is a part of
MIT’s mission statement: “We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the
ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of
humankind.” Gaining knowledge, for the sake of knowledge, while clearly important has
never been the end goal of an MIT education, rather using that knowledge (which is our
definition of a career) to improve the world is our focus. Through our mission statement,
we express our commitment to developing the careers of our students (and all members of
the MIT community).
2. Shared and collaborative responsibility. Career exploration and career services is a

shared and collaborative responsibility. Like many aspects of MIT, the responsibility for
career exploration and career services does not rest with one organization. Rather, this
responsibility is shared among Institute-wide offices (e.g. Office of the Vice Chancellor),
schools, colleges, departments, programs, alumni (through the Alumni Association), etc.
While this shared responsibility can (and has) lead to undesired variability among our
students’ perception of the effectiveness of career exploration and career services, a
strength of this shared responsibility is that domain-specific knowledge is often critical for
effective career exploration and development. At the same time, we emphasize in this
principle that this responsibility is collaborative in nature. That is, MIT can better achieve
its goals when we work together across and within all organizations of the Institute and
leveraging connections outside of the Institute, in particular through alumni.
3. Student ownership. Students are the owners of their individual career development.
While the Institute shares responsibility for offering exploration opportunities, as the
primary stakeholder in their career, students are expected to be actively engaged in, and
responsible for, determining their career values, interests and goals.
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4. Supporting diversity. Career exploration and career services must support the diverse
interests, needs, and values of all students. This includes not only programs of study;
degree level; academic class (first year, sophomore, … graduating doctoral student); career
interests; and industries, but also race; ethnicity; sex; gender identity; sexual orientation;
religion; national origin; disability; citizenship; age; political views; socioeconomic status;
veteran status; immigration status; physical appearance, etc.
5. Excellence and leadership. Excellence is desired in our support of career exploration and
career development. At a minimum, we must be cognizant of best practices and apply them
(when appropriate to our context) including those arising externally as well as internally
(e.g. among MIT departments). It’s also the case that there are critically important
conversations happening nationally and at our peer institutions that MIT should be acting
as a leader within. From constricted hiring cycles to diversity and equity in the workplace,
we have an opportunity to help shape the policies and practices for our student’s well
being.
6. Learning by doing. MIT’s education values the importance of learning by doing. This
emphasis can be observed in the many hands-on experiences and projects throughout
MIT’s subjects, UROP offerings, or the almost unlimited number of academic and
extracurricular activities that focus on experiential learning. In the realm of career
exploration and career development, learning by doing also can play a critical role most
often realized, though not exclusively, through internships, UROPs, MISTI, etc.
Our Objectives
In considering objectives for career exploration and career services, we focus on what we seek to
accomplish rather than how. It is vital that we start with a values-led orientation (while later in the
report, we make specific recommendations for accomplishing these objectives).
Our recommendation is that MIT adopt the following objectives for career exploration and career
services:
1. Foster in all students the career development skills to support a lifelong ability to work
Current college students will hold many jobs over their lifetime. While the average number of jobs
for young baby boomers with college degrees was about 12 , the expectations are that this number
will be even larger for millennials and Gen Z (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). Further, many
jobs of the future do not exist today. The World Economic Forum (2016) has noted that “65
percent of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely
new job types that aren’t on our radar yet”.
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Some research has also emphasized how crucial our professional lives are to our well being.
Gallup research studied five components of well-being (social, physical, community, financial, and
career), and found that career well-being is the most important predictor of well-being across the
board (Rath & Harter, 2010). Not only will our students face continual decision making about
their careers but that aspect of their lives is a critical part of their overall well-being.
Given this context, we believe that MIT has a responsibility to develop in its students an
awareness of and skills for the lifelong development of their careers including self-reflection and
assessment, understanding the connection between one’s values and the world of work, and
decision making. This responsibility is also echoed in MIT’s mission statement which notes that,
“We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely,
creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.“ Our recommended objective extends
that by emphasizing this is a lifelong pursuit and highlighting the importance of career
development skills.
Helping students gain personal insight into who they are as an individual, what they value, where
they are starting from and what the next steps are is key. Developing their understanding of
different career pathways, including within domains they may not have thought about before, is
an important part of career exploration.
2. Enable effective career exploration for all students.
Career exploration, the “purposeful behavior to access information that is new to the individual
about one’s career,” is a part of the lifelong process of career development. A student’s time at MIT
is a critical moment in the development of that process.
We take the view that effective career exploration is best achieved through a wide range of
opportunities that include activities designed to learn about:
● one’s self
● majors (including the impact choice of major has or does not have one’s career path)
● professions
● industries
● companies
● civic engagement
● additional studies beyond current degree
Echoing our Learning by Doing principle, career exploration opportunities will naturally include
experiential activities such as internships, research opportunities (e.g. UROPs at the
undergraduate level), shadowing experiences, cooperative education, volunteerism, and service
learning.
Further, enabling effective exploration implies that students should have reasonable time to make
informed decisions about their career. Recruiting trends have continued to accelerate such that
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some employers of MIT students are requiring decisions on full-time employment (i.e.
post-graduation) in early fall. MIT, like many other universities, have employer recruiting
guidelines which ask for deadlines of no earlier than the end of October.
These employment offer timelines are incongruent with graduate school timelines. Notification of
admission to graduate school programs typically begins to occur around late January. A Council of
Graduate Schools resolution (which MIT and over 350 other institutions have signed) requires any
offer of financial support for graduate studies remain open until at least April 15. Similarly, most
graduate student fellowships from government or other outside organization (i.e. not from the
academic institution) are not made until mid-spring.
These different decision timelines between employment and graduate studies are driven in part
by differing “start dates”: typically early-to-mid-summer for employment but late summer/early
fall for graduate school. However, this two-to-three months difference in start dates would
suggest the acceptance of employment should be made in January/February as opposed to the
current October/November deadlines. Consistent with our principles, MIT should take a
leadership role in resetting the recruiting timelines to enable more effective career exploration for
not only our students but students everywhere.
3. Advocate on behalf of all students for equity in career exploration and career
opportunities through engagement with external stakeholders such as employers,
professional schools, graduate programs, fellowships and more.
MIT has a responsibility to advocate for equity for our students and alumni in career exploration
and career opportunities in the world beyond our campus. It is not sufficient for MIT to strive for
diversity, equity, and inclusivity within its walls, only to have its students and alumni face barriers
within MIT and outside. Finally, MIT has a significant ability to provide leadership to the nation
and the world, advocacy for our own students and alumni can, and we argue should, extend to be a
force for change for the betterment of humanity.
4. Employ a continuous improvement process that includes assessment of measurable

objectives.
Continuous improvement through assessment with respect to our principles and objectives must
be a part of our commitment to career exploration and career services. Following Makela and
Rooney (2014), we suggest our continuous improvement process should include assessment of:
● Needs: To determine what career exploration opportunities and career services support
student achievement of our objectives.
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● Participation: To determine who is using existing career exploration opportunities and
career services and help to identify if any student populations are being under-served.
● Satisfaction: To determine the level of satisfaction of users of existing career exploration

opportunities and career services.
● Outcomes: To measure the impact of career exploration and career services. In particular,
we believe that learning outcomes are important as a more direct measure of
developmental change compared to e.g. satisfaction assessment. Learning outcomes will
generally be more difficult to assess than participation and satisfaction outcomes.
However, especially when considering changes to career exploration opportunities aimed
at improved learning, assessment of these outcomes is important.
Further, as career exploration and career services are a shared and collaborative responsibility at
MIT, we believe this continuous improvement process must include assessment of the effectivity
of the interactions between all providers of career-related opportunities.
References
Makela, J.P. & Rooney, G.S. (2014). Framing assessment for career services: Telling our story. New
Directions for Student Services, 148, pp. 65-80.
Rath, T., & Harter, J. (2010). Wellbeing: The five essential elements. New York, NY: Gallup Press.
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2. Current State
In this section, we consider the current state of career exploration and career services at MIT. We
begin with a discussion of the structure of career services and then address our current standing
relative to our objectives.
Structure of Career Services at MIT
The structure of career services on college campuses are often described as centralized,
decentralized, or hybrid. The 2017/2018 survey of college career services conducted by the
National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) shows that all three models occur
essentially equally for Tier 1 research institutes. Specifically, 30%, 34%, and 36% of Tier 1
research campuses have centralized, decentralized, and hybrid models, respectively.
MIT’s career services have a hybrid structure with the centralized Career Advising and
Professional Development (CAPD) office working alongside a variety of “local” career services in
Schools, Departments, and Programs. CAPD supports all undergraduate, graduate, and PhD
students, in addition to Post-Docs and recent Alumni two year out from graduation. Local services
may be supported by multiple people (typically staff), however, in many cases the local staffing
are (significantly) less than one full-time equivalent, especially for smaller programs. Based on
inquiries of this Committee during Spring 2019, the staffing distribution are shown in Figure
MIT-Staffing.
Figure MIT-Staffing: Staffing of people supporting career services across MIT. Data is based on a Spring 2019
survey. Total headcount is 120 staff. Hours is estimated time actually spent in support of career services and
totals about 5320 hours. Assuming 174 hours/month, the actual staffing is about 30.5 FTE.
CAPD has a current FTE of 24.2 staff members of which 18.2 FTE are staff divided into three
distinct function areas Career Services, Prehealth Advising, and Distinguished Fellowships for
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which all seek to offer and support career and professional development opportunities for
students. The remaining 6 FTE are support staff in a variety of roles. Staff work effort is divided in
varying amounts toward counseling, programming, administrative tasks, supervision, writing,
data collection and outreach based on the team member’s specific role and function in the office.
Career counselors are assigned to specific academic departments and student cohorts (first year
undergraduates, underrepresented minorities, international students, athletes, LGBTQ students,
and more) in an effort to become knowledge experts in the fields and industries of interests,
understand student needs, and offer tailored resources and support.
As part of our work, we surveyed MIT academic departments, student organizations, and a wide
variety of other campus organizations (e.g. UROP, UPOP, etc.) about career exploration
opportunities they offered. Our hope was to have a better understanding of the range of activities
currently available to students, as well as how those opportunities supported different segments
of our population (e.g. first-year undergrads versus undergrads generally; variations among
departments; etc). This effort proved exceedingly difficult for a variety of reasons including lack of
reporting and lack of clarity in what activities support career exploration.
Another subtle issue is quantifying the number of offerings. This includes our ability to compare
the number of opportunities provided by different offerors or available to different cohorts. A
typical example would be the First Year Pre-Orientation Programs (FPOPs). FPOPs provide 4-5
day discovery opportunities typically in areas aligned with majors and there are around 30 of
these FPOPs for incoming students to select from. In Fall 2019, 626 first year students
participated in one FPOP which is about 55% of the first year class. A fundamental question is: do
we count FPOP as one single opportunity or 30 different opportunities? From the student
perspective, while they have a wide choice, they will still only participate in an FPOP once. From
the offeror’s perspective, each FPOP is its own opportunity.
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While we have some coarse data, collecting more granular material to allow for a comprehensive
overview or comparisons proved challenging. Though there are difficulties of collecting and
quantifying career exploration opportunities currently on campus, we offer nonetheless the
following observations:
● We know that hundreds of opportunities exist for career exploration which include career
fairs; career-life workshops, seminars and classes; company information sessions;
internships; UROP; graduate and professional school planning; career counseling; resumé
writing; etc.
● We believe about ⅓ of these opportunities are intended for all MIT students, while about ⅓
each are more specific to graduate or undergraduate students.
● We believe that these opportunities are offered in relatively equal amounts (i.e. about ¼
each) by CAPD, academic departments/programs, student organizations, and other
organizations (e.g. UROP, UPOP, GEL, Alumni Association, etc).
● For students seeking to explore their career, learning about what opportunities may be of
interest to them is difficult as there is no one central portal or site. This is especially true
for first-year undergraduate students that are not affiliated with a department yet.
Assessment of Objectives
1. Foster in all students the career development skills to support a lifelong ability to work
Numerous offices and programs such as CAPD, UPOP, GEL, PKG Center, Student Support Services,
and others seek to teach students the career development skills of self-reflection, understanding
one’s values and decision-making through workshops and events. Examples include:
● Career Counseling: Meetings with students ranging from 20-45 minutes for one-on-one
counseling to help students in self-reflection and exploring options for choice of major,
co-curricular activities, and gaining practical experience through internships and research
to help them with their career development. These career counseling meetings are
predominantly held in CAPD but also occur in programs like UPOP and academic advising
meetings. In 2018-19, CAPD held a total of 4,988 non-unique student appointments, quick
queries and online sessions.
● Self-assessment: CAPD offers online tools and guided interpretation for the following
assessments: Clifton Strengths, Myers Briggs Typology Indicator (MBTI), and Strong
Interest Inventory. In addition, UPOP provides the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument
(HBDI) annually to roughly 275 sophomores and conducts an internal assessment
measuring self-efficacy on career decision making.
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● Workshops: In 2018-19 CAPD held 200 workshops, presentations, speaker panels,
employer events, and information sessions with a total of 4,559 non-unique attendees.
Topics range from learning about varying careers, to conducting the Internship and Job
Search and negotiating offers. Each workshop engages students in some self-reflection and
guided activities to help students be mindful of their values and interests when making
decisions. In addition to CAPD’s offerings, programs such as GEL, UPOP, PKG and academic
departments also host targeted events to assist with career exploration.
Efforts to engage students in opportunities to develop career development skills are more
commonly successful when taught as a by-product of something more enticing or tangible such as
writing resumes, recruiting activities, meeting with alumni and/or employers, etc.. It is fairly
common for career development workshops and events to have low turnouts, or for resources to
be underutilized due to competition for a student time and attention. Academic responsibilities,
recruiting activities and co-curricular activities can often lead to busy schedules and time
management challenges. Unfortunately, when the career development skills of self-reflection,
understanding one’s values and decision-making are most sorely needed, students are under
highly stressful situations and already struggling. Proactively creating opportunities for these
skills to be developed through pre existing commitments could be beneficial.
At present, the above mentioned resources are assessed through surveys and anecdoctal feedback,
with the findings being used to determine how to improve the events and resources. Efforts to
assess the impact of these resources longitudinally would be beneficial to determine if we are
succeeding in strengthening these skills for our students, as they are necessary life long skills.
2. Enable effective career exploration for all students.
We next consider student participation and satisfaction with career exploration while at MIT. For
this purpose, we have found the Career Exploration Survey useful. Conducted in January 2017, all
students at MIT were invited to participate. Figure All-Explor shows the overall agreement that
students had the ability to explore their career interests at MIT. The results indicate that
approximately 80% of undergraduates and masters students agreed (the combination of strongly
and somewhat agreed), while approximately 70% of doctoral students agreed. This
approximately 10% difference was statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, and is tied
to an approximately 10% decrease in the strongly agree response rate. We will consider this
difference in more detail later.
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Figure All-Explor: Response to “To what extent do you agree with the following statement: I have been able to
explore career-related opportunities of interest to me at MIT. (e.g. attending career events,
graduate/professional school info sessions, tech talks)”. Options were: Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree,
Neither Agree nor Disagree, Somewhat Disagree, Strongly Disagree. Error bars are 95% confidence on
Strongly Agree response rate and on the combined Strongly Agree+Somewhat Agree response rate. MIT
Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
Undergraduates
At the undergraduate level, the ability to explore careers at MIT varied most significantly with the
department while the differences among year, gender, and ethnicity were much less. Figure
UG-Explor-Dept shows the Agree percentage by primary department1, sorted from highest
(Course 15 with 94%) to lowest (Course 12 with 33%). The average department is a 75% Agree
rate. With 95% confidence, Course 15, 10, 6, 16, and 3 are all higher than this average, while
Course 8 and 12 are lower.
1
First-year student responses are not included in department-based statistics, as first-year students do not declare a
major until the Spring semester.
16
Figure UG-Explor-Dept: Variation by department for undergraduate agreement with ability “to explore
career-related opportunities of interest to me at MIT.” Only shown is the Agree response rate (combination of
Strongly and Somewhat Agree) because of lack of consistent sample size. Also, some smaller departments still
lacked enough sample size to include. MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
As part of the Career Exploration Survey, students were asked “How useful do you find the
following sources of information about career opportunities?” with possible responses being: Very
useful, Somewhat useful, Not useful, I have not used this information source. Figure
UG-Sources-Useful shows the departmental mean percentage of undergraduate respondents that
found the information source Very or Somewhat useful.
● Peers are the overwhelming source of useful information with the mean across
department’s being 94%. Further, the department-to-department variability in usefulness
of Peer information is quite low (as indicated by the error bars).
● The next most useful information sources are Internships (78%) and UROPs (76%), though
the department-to-department variability is quite large.
17
● The most variable information source is the Fall Career Fair (60% mean with 5% and 95%
values of approximately 27% and 82%). Though not shown in the figure, the Fall Career
Fair is the second-most utilized source of career information with 93% of undergraduates
(excluding first years) using the Fall Career Fair. Thus, the variability is related to the
usefulness of the information (rather than attendance).
Figure UG-Sources-Useful: Departmental mean percentage of undergraduate respondents that found an

information source useful for exploring career-related opportunities. Error bar show the smallest and largest
department response, removing the lowest and highest response (roughly the 5% and 95% values). MIT
Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
To better understand what the main factors might be in the departmental variation in student
ability to explore careers, we investigated the correlation among different career information
sources and students ability to explore careers. The detailed results of this analysis are available
in Appendix: 2017 Career Exploration Survey Analysis. Based on this analysis as well as the
overall usefulness of different information sources (Figure UG-Sources-Useful), we arrived at the
following qualitative model shown in Figure UG-model for how career exploration occurs and in
particular can vary among departments.
● Peers are their most useful source of information with little variability among departments.
18
● CAPD does have department-to-department variability but it has little correlation to
overall ability for career exploration.
● The three statistically significant drivers of departmental variability in career exploration

are the Fall Career Fair, Internships, and the Department itself. In other words, when the
students in a department agree (or disagree) that they have been able to explore
career-related opportunities, then the Fall Career Fair, Internships, and the Department
will have typically provided (or not provided) them useful career information.
● A strong negative correlation exists between the usefulness of UROPs and Research Groups
and the usefulness of the Fall Career Fair and Internships. That is, when students find
UROPs/Research Groups as useful sources of career information, then Fall Career
Fair/Internships will tend to be less useful, and as a result, students will tend to be less
satisfied with the overall ability to explore their career.
● This negative correlation can also be observed between overall ability to explore career
opportunities and student interest in pursuing an advanced degree immediately after
graduation. In fact, the percentage of students interested in immediately pursuing
advanced degrees is negatively correlated (with at least 95% confidence) with not only the
ability to explore career opportunities but also the usefulness of Internships, Fall Career
Fair, Alumni, Parents, Online, and Student Groups. The only significant positive correlation
with interest in pursuing an advanced degree is Research Groups.
● We further investigated how a student’s immediate plans after graduation were related to
their overall satisfaction with career exploration. The distribution of responses for
students planning immediate employment/military or for those planning another
degree/undecided are shown in Figure UG-Satis-Plan. The nearly 13% difference in
strongly agree responses is significant with p<0.01 uncertainty.
● Another indication of the less effective career exploration for students considering
additional school can be observed in the frequency with which different sources were used
to explore graduate and professional school programs. Figure UG-Sources-AllvsDegree
shows both the percentage of all students that used an information source for career
exploration as well as the percentage of students planning on another degree that used an
information source to explore graduate/professional school opportunities. For every
information source, a smaller percentage of students use it for graduate/professional
school exploration than for career exploration. For example, 98% of students use their
peers for career exploration but only 67% of students planning on additional education use
peers to explore graduate/professional studies.
● These results suggest that an important opportunity exists to improve the overall
effectiveness of career exploration by broadening support for career paths focused on
research or in general requiring more education beyond an undergraduate degree. This
could include:
19
○ Having a significant presence of UROP as well as non-MIT research-focused
organizations at the Fall Career Fair
○ Holding research-focused panel sessions/etc. during Career Week
○ Providing increased financial (e.g. housing) assistance for summer research
programs that may not pay sufficiently (including for staying locally for
participation in summer UROPs)
● The usefulness of Alumni is strongly coupled to both the usefulness of Internships and the
Fall Career Fair. Further, the usefulness of Alumni and Online resources are strongly
coupled to each other, suggesting students are connecting to alumni through on-line means
(as well as at the Fall Career Fair).
● The usefulness of information from Parents is also strongly correlated to Internships. This
coupling was also surprising to us and could suggest that parents are helping students find
internships, or perhaps their advice is more useful when making decisions about
internships.
● The usefulness of the Department is strongly correlated to their Faculty and Advisors,
though Advisors are on average about 10% less useful than other Faculty. This is perhaps
not surprising given that students can search out any faculty member for
advice/information, while their advisors may have been assigned to them. This suggests a
possible improvement (though perhaps small) would be to lower barriers for switching
advisors to better match a student’s career interests as they evolve.
● Faculty and Advisors are also (not surprisingly) positively correlated to UROPs/Research
Groups. As a result, we believe the relatively small correlation of Faculty and Advisors to
overall career exploration is a consequence of the cancellation of a negative effect from
UROPs/Research Groups->Fall Career Fair/Internships and a positive effect from the
Department.
20
Figure UG-model: Model for how career exploration occurs among undergraduate students.
Percentages indicate the fraction of undergraduate students (excluding first years) that found that
source of information useful for career exploration. The two-way arrows indicate statistically
significant correlation of usefulness with green/red arrows indicating positive/negative
correlation.
21
Figure UG-Satis-Plan: Comparison of agreement with ability to explore career opportunities for students
whose immediate plan after graduation is employment or military service versus students who are undecided
or pursuing another degree. Approximately 46% of student respondents had an immediate plan of
employment or military service. The strongly agree difference is significant with less than 1% uncertainty
(p<0.01).
Figure UG-Sources-AllvsDegree: Comparison of information sources used by all upperclass undergraduate

students vs. undergraduate students planning on pursuing another degree.
22
We have also considered how perceptions of career exploration varied among gender as well as
ethnicity. In general, we found little evidence of differences among ethnicity. However, with
respect to gender, female undergraduates were 5-6% more likely to disagree that they have had
the ability to explore their careers (Figure UG-Gender). Gender differences also did occur within
specific programs (see Appendix: Analysis of Gendered Differences).
Somewhat Agree
Neither Agree nor
Strongly Disagree Somewhat Disagree and Strongly
Disagree
Agree
Female 3% 12% 8% 77%

All
Male 2% 7% 8% 83%
undergrad
p 0.008 0.027
Figure UG-Gender: Undergraduate student agreement by gender with ability “to explore career-related
opportunities of interest to me at MIT.” 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017). Significance
level shown for two-sided tests of equality for which p< 0.05 (highlighted by red text). Note: significant
gender differences exist within programs (see Appendix: Analysis of Gendered Differences).
Masters Students
Figure Masters-Explor-Dept shows the overall satisfaction with career exploration among masters
programs. Similar to undergraduate students, the department-to-department variability in career
exploration for masters students is much larger than other factors (such as gender and ethnicity).
Some observations about specific programs are:
● The Supply Chain Management (SCM) program (which has the highest overall satisfaction
with career exploration opportunities) is a one-year program requiring at least 2 years of
work experience. SCM has significant career services support for its students starting even
before they arrive on campus.
● Course 6’s M.Eng program and Course 16’s SM program high overall satisfaction with
career exploration (these are the second and third highest rated programs) appears to be
directly related to a correspondingly high usefulness of the Internships and the Fall Career
Fair. Course 6 has the highest percentage of students that find these useful (90% and 85%,
respectively) and Course 16 has the next highest percentages (74% and 80%, respectively).
23
Figure Masters-Explor-Dept: Variation by department for masters students agreement with ability “to explore
career-related opportunities of interest to me at MIT.” Only shown is the Agree response rate (combination of
Strongly and Somewhat Agree) because of lack of consistent sample size. Also, some smaller departments still
lacked enough sample size to include. MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
● Sloan’s MBA program (Course 15) has a (not-surprisingly) significant support for career
exploration. In particular, one of its clear strengths is its student groups, with 73% of its
students finding them useful (compared to Course 1 at 57% which is the next highest
usefulness of student groups).
● The Department of Urban Studies and Programming (DUSP, Course 11) has very strong
usefulness of department-provided resources (94%), other Faculty (97%), and Alumni
(83%).
● DUSP and Sloan are the masters programs with the lowest usefulness of the Fall Career
Fair. In fact, only 31% and 39%, respectively, of their students even attend the Fair.
The data from the 2017 Career Exploration Survey also indicates that an opportunity may exist
across most programs to improve the utilization of internships for masters students. As shown in
24
Figure Masters-Usefulness_v_utilization, internships (when utilized) are the second most useful
source of information only lower than peers. However, the utilization is much lower, with less
than 70% of masters students utilizing internships.
Figure Masters-Usefulness_v_utilization: Response of masters students to “How useful do you find the
following sources of information about career opportunities?”. On the left are the responses for all masters
students outside of Sloan. On the right are the responses for Sloan masters students. Utilization is the
percentage of respondents that utilized that source (utilizers). Usefulness is percentage of utilizers that
found the source either Very or Somewhat useful. 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
In fact, significant variability exists in utilization of internships among masters programs (see
Figure Masters-Intern-UtilUse-Dept) with a low of 46% utilization for Course 3 to a high of 93%
for Course 6. We note that the variability of usefulness is small, in fact the lowest usefulness is
87% among all programs. One problem with the survey is that graduate students may in fact be
referring to internship experiences they had prior to attending graduate school. We will
investigate graduate student internships in more detail in 6. Graduate Student Internships, where
we will show that there are significant benefits and unmet demand for internship experiences as
graduate students.
We also note that alumni are the third most useful source of career information (see Figure
Masters-Usefulness_v_utilization), though also have relatively low utilization. We will consider
alumni engagement in more detail in 7. Alumni Engagement.
25
Figure Masters-Intern-UtilUse-Dept: Departmental mean percentage of masters respondents that utilized
internships for career exploration and the percentage of those utilizers that found the internship useful for
career exploration. MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
We have also considered how perceptions of career exploration varied among gender as well as
ethnicity. In general, we found little evidence of differences among ethnicity. However, with
respect to gender, male masters student were 9% more likely to agree that they have had the
ability to explore their careers (Figure Masters-Gender). Gender differences also did occur within
specific programs (see Appendix: Analysis of Gendered Differences).
26
Somewhat Agree
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Agree
Female 4% 9% 14% 73%
All masters Male 4% 6% 8% 82%
p 0.016 0.004
Figure Masters-Gender: Masters student agreement by gender with ability “to explore career-related
opportunities of interest to me at MIT.” 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017). Significance
level shown for two-sided tests of equality have p< 0.05 (highlighted by red text). Note: significant gender
differences exist within programs (see Appendix: Analysis of Gendered Differences).
Doctoral Students
Figure Doctoral-Explor-Dept shows the overall satisfaction with career exploration among
doctoral programs. Similar to undergraduate and masters students, the
department-to-department variability in career exploration for doctoral students is much larger
than other factors (such as gender and ethnicity).
The utilization and usefulness of different sources of career information for doctoral students in
shown in Figure Doctoral-Usefulness_v_utilization. We again find that both internships and
alumni are highly useful though with relatively low utilization. As well, significant variability
exists in utilization of internships among doctoral programs (see Figure
Doctoral-Intern-UtilUse-Dept) with a low of 35% utilization for Course 8 to a high of 84% for the
OR program. Again, the variability of usefulness is small with the lowest usefulness is 83% among
all programs. We will investigate graduate student internships in more detail in 6. Graduate
Student Internships.
27
Figure Doctoral-Explor-Dept: Variation by department for doctoral students agreement with ability “to
explore career-related opportunities of interest to me at MIT.” Only shown is the Agree response rate
(combination of Strongly and Somewhat Agree) because of lack of consistent sample size. Also, some smaller
departments still lacked enough sample size to include. MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
28
Figure Doctoral-Usefulness_v_utilization: Response of doctoral students to “How useful do you find the
following sources of information about career opportunities?”. Utilization is the percentage of respondents
that utilized that source (utilizers). Usefulness is percentage of utilizers that found the source either Very or
Somewhat useful. 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
29
Figure Doctoral-Intern-UtilUse-Dept: Departmental mean percentage of doctoral respondents that utilized
internships for career exploration and the percentage of those utilizers that found the internship useful for
career exploration. MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
We have also considered how perceptions of career exploration for doctoral students varied
among gender as well as ethnicity. In general, we found little evidence of differences among
ethnicity. With respect to gender, no statistically significant differences exist across the all
doctoral students that responded (Figure Doctoral-Gender). However, gender differences did
occur within specific programs (see Appendix: Analysis of Gendered Differences).
Somewhat Agree
Neither Agree nor
Disagree
Agree
Female 7% 13% 13% 67%
All doctoral Male 4% 9% 16% 71%
Figure Doctoral-Gender: Doctoral student agreement by gender with ability “to explore career-related
opportunities of interest to me at MIT.” 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017). The gender
difference are not statistically significant (p>0.05). Note: significant gender differences exist within programs
(see Appendix: Analysis of Gendered Differences).
3. Advocate on behalf of all students for equity in career exploration and career
opportunities through engagement with external stakeholders such as employers,
professional schools, graduate programs, fellowships and more.
As a leading Institution, MIT has the opportunity and responsibility to serve as a leader and
advocate on diversity, as described in the principles, and equity issues. Engaging students,
employers, MIT administrators and our peers nationwide to remove barriers are endeavors that
will improve and increase career exploration opportunities.
CAPD staff members have been engaged in numerous external boards, committees and
professional organizations to advocate for MIT students, and college students in general, on a wide
breadth of topics ranging from equity, diversity, ethics, first year students, graduate students and
more. Activities include:
● The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE): Various CAPD staff are active
members of various sub-groups and working committees such as the NACE STEM Intensive
College and Universities, Principles for Ethical Professional Practice Committee, First
Destination Committee to help lead in the development of policies, case studies and
professional standards.
30
● Consortium of Financing Higher Education (COFHE): MIT CAPD co-leads with Harvard
University Office of Career Services on advocacy for changes on the senior survey so that it
better aligns with career center needs.
● Committees and Consortiums: CAPD staff are members and presenters on topics for groups
such as the Northeast Career Center Directors, Northeast Higher Ed Consortium, Employer
Relations Consortium, The Graduate Career Consortium (GCC), the First and Second Year
Career Advising Consortium and the Career Counselors Consortium (CCC). In regard to the
CCC, staff have served on the CCC Steering committee and board to lead in the development
of career counselor resources and trainings to address current trends in the field of career
counseling.
● Ivy Plus: As a member of the Ivy Plus groups for Directors, Associate Directors for Career
Services, CAPD participates in helpful benchmarking and policy review to advocate on
behalf of all the university member students in a collective manner to effect change and
elevate issues that need to be addressed.
● Employer Symposium: CAPD has hosted several all-day symposiums engaging employers,
alumni, peer universities and MIT administrators to talk about key recruiting trends and
issues. These events have been used to educate employers on academics and recruiting at
MIT and as an opportunity for advocacy on gender equity, offer deadlines, recruiting
conflicts with academics, and more.
● American Association of University Women (AAUW): One CAPD staff member has been
trained on Salary Negotiation Start Smart Workshops and serves as the Institute liaison to
the AAUW, coordinating training opportunities for staff and groups on campus and
facilitating workshops for students.
The recent efforts in examining the Graduate Student Survey and identifying gender salary
inequity are examples of good practices in data collection and advocacy. The elevation of the
findings to administrators and employers through educational events, such as the Employer
Symposium, and campus-wide group discussions are critical for exposing these unfair practices
and effecting change.
Increasing opportunities for MIT administrators and faculty to gather and share the experiences of
the students in their departments and programs helps CAPD and MIT be less siloed and more
effective in advocating for MIT students and serving as a leader amongst its peers on topics
related to recruiting, gender equity, diversity and more. In addition, increasing opportunities for
student engagement, collaboration and feedback on trends and challenges is recommended.
CAPD’s recent creation of a First Year Undergraduate Advisory Board, the development of a new
Peer Career Advisor program and hiring of the twelve Fall Career Fair student directors, are great
steps towards fostering strong collaborations with students to enhance our efforts to serve MIT
student career exploration and development needs.
4. Employ a continuous improvement process that includes assessment of measurable

objectives.
31
CAPD strives for continuous improvement through staff engagement and leadership in national
and regional conferences and professional committees in order to be more knowledgeable about
current trends and new initiatives elsewhere that can be of use to our career exploration efforts
and growth. Examples include: Northeast Career Center Directors, Northeast Higher Ed
Consortium, the NACE STEM Intensive College and Universities, co-leading the COFHE Career
Center Group with Harvard and more. Using the knowledge and expertise gained, the following
are efforts made with the goal of continuous improvement for the services and support provided
for all stakeholders - undergraduate, graduate and PhD students, Post-Docs, recent Alumni,
employers and the Institute as a whole.
Needs Identification
● Office-wide SWOT analysis of CAPD services, resources, and support to aid in the creation
of a strategic plan to guide the office over a five-year span in an effort to address key areas
of improvement, develop new innovative services, expand our reach on MIT’s campus.
● Focus groups with students and employers on specific topics such as our facilities,
recruiting conflicts with academic responsibilities, evaluating our career management
system, developing our website to better meet student needs and more.
● Employer surveys to assess needs and employer experience with on-campus recruiting,
student engagement, career fairs, etc.
● Special topic conference and educational seminars to gain advanced knowledge on critical
students groups such a first year undergraduates, graduate students, underrepresented
minorities and more.
Participation and Engagement Tracking
● Conduct targeted outreach to academic department and student organization

● Registration and check-in of student attendees for events and services used to track
engagement levels
● Compile mid-year and year-end data on event and service users to identify trends and
missed opportunities for specific cohorts of students.
Assessing Satisfaction
● Event surveys to gather feedback on all aspects of the event from logistics, marketing and
how well the event met the student needs and expectations
● Counseling assessments provided at random to student participating in
one-one-appointments and quick queries with staff to monitor staff ability and knowledge
to serve students
● Gathering feedback from academic administrators through our liaison model to learn of
each department’s need and what more CAPD can do to support unique department needs.
Measuring Outcomes
32
● Critical analysis of CAPD services and support offered to students against the national
standards and expectations as outlined by the National Association of Colleges and
Employers (NACE).
● Collection of first destination data through the Graduating Student Survey and Doctoral
Exit Survey to determine where MIT students go and how we are developing services and
support to align with their career interests.
● Benchmarking with relevant schools (not just the Ivy Plus) on specific targeted topics such
as first year engagement, career fairs, office facilities, staffing levels, etc. to better
understand our progress in serving students and identifying where we need to do more.
● Participating in external reviews provided by visiting committees to give an unbiased
understanding of our strengths and shortcomings within CAPD and MIT in general in
regard to career development and exploration.
● Service delivery surveys with questions that go beyond the level of satisfaction, but that
rather prompt students to share what they learned through participation to help us assess
the impact of our work toward meeting our intended goals.
While CAPD does have a variety of continuous improvement activities in place, the hybrid
structure of our career services suggests that a more inclusive continuous improvement process
should be developed. Specifically, In order to have a greater impact on career exploration at MIT,
a continuous improvement strategy should be implemented across all career exploration services
and resources at the Institute. In particular, we believe that the creation of a committee focused
on student career exploration would be a key mechanism for implementing and maintaining an
Institute-wide continuous improvement process. This recommendation is described further in
other parts of this report.
33
3. Career-related Fairs
Career fairs form an important component in a career exploration plan. They offer a centralized
venue that makes publicizing and highlighting the event for a broad range of students much easier
than smaller activities. Employers value them because they provide a clear mechanism to come to
campus and engage with students. They can be a powerful anchor event when done well, offering
students an opportunity to engage with a wide range of sectors and professionals, as well as
provide a high profile event to orient a campus conversation about career exploration. Without
care, however, they can be overwhelming to students, not offer meaningful engagement
opportunities with potential employers, and offer overly narrow exploration.
Peer institution comparison
Most of MIT’s peer institutions (with large science and engineering programs) host a large career
fair in the early Fall within the first month of the start of classes. These career fairs may be
student-run, student-managed, or managed by the university central career office. A large,
job-focused fair, though not ideal for career exploration, presents a logistically efficient way for
companies and students to pursue employment opportunities. For companies (see Appendix:
Employer Engagement Survey), the Fall fair aligns with their preferred hiring timelines and
delivers the largest critical mass of students for hiring and brand awareness. For students, a Fall
fair aligns with their need to evaluate and decide on return offers from their summer internships
and to participate in competitive recruiting processes.
Varying revenue models exist for fairs at both MIT and our peers. MIT’s career office, as well as
Princeton and Yale, do not rely on career events to fund their operating budget. At Stanford, the
excess revenues (i.e. revenue not earmarked for the next year’s fairs) fund the operational,
programming budget for the career office. At other institutions (Purdue, Michigan, Texas A&M)
with fairs run by student organizations, the funds are used for student scholarships and student
professional and career development programming, run either by the student club, the
department the student group is affiliated with, or the school/university career center.
Annually, MIT runs a variety of other career fairs and similar events throughout the year hosted
by departments, student groups, and CAPD. CAPD provides review, advisement, and guidance to
the independently-run student career fairs. Career fairs offered at MIT have included:
● Fall Career Fair (CAPD and MIT student leaders)
● Biological Engineering Career Expo (Biological Engineering Department),
● Industrial Connection Program (ICP) Fair (EECS Department)
● MIT Analytics Fair (Masters in Business Analytics program)
● Engineering Career Fair Collaborative (CAPD in collaboration with BU, Harvard, Olin, Tufts
and Yale)
34
● Asian Career Fair (MIT Asian Club)
● xFair (TechX and The MIT Chapter of Tau Beta Pi)
● European Career Fair (European Club)
● Civil & Environmental Engineering Career Fair (CEE Student Association)
● Energy Career Fair (The Energy Club)
● Polymer Day (Polymer Graduate Student Association)
● Spring Career Fair (CAPD)
MIT’s largest fair, the Fall Career Fair, has been an outlier amongst most universities in three
ways: revenue directly supports the student activities fund, student organizations are prohibited
from offering other career fairs in the fall semester with the Fall Career Fair, and a student holiday
is provided to facilitate student attendance. With respect to revenues, except for the Fall Career
Fair, the revenues for other fairs are returned to the sponsoring organizations for their discretion
in its use.
Shortcomings of Current MIT Fairs
As is well known around MIT, the hiring interests of employers at the Fall Career Fair has a heavy
emphasis on computer science, finance, and consulting. Using the 2018 Fall Career Fair data, we
have estimated the number of conversations that an undergraduate student in a major could have
had with employers interested in hiring that major. For example, as shown in Figure
FCF-Conversations, a Course 9 undergraduate would have been able to have about 1/10th of the
conversations that a Course 6-3 major would have had. While this estimate assumes that a
student has the stamina to have all of the conversations available to them, the inequality of the
current Fall Career Fair employer make-up is clear. Not all of our students are being served with
the quality we would hope. Further, we have significant concerns that this unbalanced employer
hiring demographic could also contribute to career funneling at MIT by drawing more students
into a small set of professions, and, by association, majors (Binder et al, 2015).
Beyond the inequality of opportunity across majors, the current format of the Fall Career Fair has
other potential negative effects:
● The early Fall date could contribute to students making unnecessarily accelerated
decisions with respect to career exploration, cutting short the time to consider a wide
range of options e.g. UROP vs. internship; graduate school vs full-time employment.
● While events during Fall Career Week include some opportunities for career exploration
without a focus on hiring, the Fall Career Fair is a jobs-focused event at which employers
are seeking full-time and internship candidates.
● The Fall Career Fair has almost no opportunity to explore further education (i.e. graduate
or professional school). Closely related, undergraduate research opportunities (both MIT’s
UROP as well as similar programs at other universities) are largely not represented. This
35
correlates with the earlier finding that undergraduate students seeking advanced degrees
are less satisfied with career exploration at MIT.
Figure FCF-Conversations: The estimated number of conversations with employers that an undergraduate
student could have had at the 2018 Fall Career (as a fraction of the number of conversations an
undergraduate student in Course 6-3 could have had). Note: this assumes at students have the stamina to
have all of the conversations available to them.
The revenue model for each career fair event at MIT varies in fees for participation, activities
included, expectations for employers and how the fees are used. The lack of guiding principles for
fair-generated fees forgoes an opportunity to have fairs support career exploration and
development beyond the one event. In the specific case of the Fall Career Fair, historically the
excess revenues generated have been directly tied to the support of student activities. In recent
years, MIT student organizations have received about $1.5M of support from MIT of which
$800-900K has come from the Fall Career Fair excess revenues. This reliance upon Fall Career
Fair revenues for providing about two-thirds of student activity funding has led to a strong profit
focus. This in turn affects the fees charged. Specifically, over the past few years, MIT Fall Career
Fair fees have had various sponsorship tiers at increasing fees which provide increasing benefits.
These sponsorship fees range from $1250 to $18,000. For Fall 2019, the average fee paid was
$2800. Non-profits and start-ups are eligible to apply for financial assistance to participate in the
fair at the lowest sponsorship level ($1250). The range of fees at MIT’s Fall Career Fair are much
36
higher than for peer institution’s Fall fairs. For example, the next highest fee is Stanford, which
has a single fee level of $1100 for all employers except non-profits ($270).
Last year, the administration committed to transitioning student activity funding away from Fall
Career Fair revenues (phased in over the next few years) and then utilizing these revenues to
support career exploration and related activities. We strongly support this decision and believe it
will improve career exploration both by providing additional funding and also by reducing the
profit focus of the Fall fair.
Recommendations
We considered recommending elimination of the Fall Career Fair and replacing it with a series of
alternative career events. However, a large fair (even one solely focused on internship and
full-time hiring) in the Fall has numerous advantages as described earlier. Instead, we
recommend making changes that can enhance the Fall Career Fair, as well as other Career Fairs.
1. Coordination and Oversight: Career fair events should have greater coordination and
oversight. We recommend the formation of a Committee for Student Career Exploration
and Development composed of faculty, CAPD and other staff, students, and alumni charged
with ensuring a holistic oversight of career exploration, including, critically, career fairs.
With respect to career fairs, this committee would be able to set standards, avoid
duplication of objectives and target audience, and ensure that revenues generated through
career exploration events are utilized to support career exploration. CAPD staff are a
critical component of this proposed committee providing the professional expertise around
career exploration and career services.
2. Revenue Model: To further ensure that career fairs are designed and run so as to make
career exploration a main objective, our committee recommends that all revenue
generated by career events be earmarked towards support of career exploration. Our
intention is to be quite inclusive of what constitutes support of career exploration. Some
examples would be:
● future career-related programming i.e. alumni panels or career treks.
● individual exploration activities i.e. scholarships for attending conferences; stipends
for internships, research opportunities, or other experiential learning for which
suitable funding may not be fully available.
● staffing to provide added career exploration support
A direct corollary of this recommendation is that the Fall Career Fair revenue should not be
used for general student activities as it has in the past. As mentioned previously, we
strongly support the administration’s plan to phase out the use of Fall Career Fair revenues
for student activities.
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3. Expand Fall Career Fair Scope: Incorporate career exploration opportunities in the Fall
Career Fair for students considering graduate education. This should include a significant
UROP presence from both on-campus (e.g. have booths for departments, programs, or labs
offering UROPs, in addition to the UROP Office) as well as off-campus (e.g. UROP program
offices from peer institutions). Similarly, on-campus graduate programs could be included
with the objective of providing information about graduate studies in related fields, in
particular targeting undeclared undergraduates. However, the incorporation of graduate
programs may be more effective as part of the proposed MIT Career Exploration
Conference. In addition, representation of non-profits and civic organizations at the fair
should grow, resulting in the need to consider reduced rates for organization participation.
Note: based on the past two Fall Career Fairs, we estimate there are about 50 booths of
unused space that can accommodate attendance growth in UROP, graduate school,
non-profit and civic organizations.
4. Resetting the Career Exploration Timeline: Push back the date of the Fall Career Fair
towards the end of October to allow additional time for career exploration programming
(see Chapter 4: Career Exploration Events).
Work with peer institutions to enhance offer deadline requirements of employers that
allow students more time for exploration prior to decision-making around an internship or
full-time employment. Specific items to consider:
a. Moving deadlines for full-time and internship employment to nominally four
months prior to start date
b. Mandatory extensions for employment offers until April 15 for any student
considering further education.
c. Require students to carry no more than 3 employment offers at any one time.
5. Clarity of Purpose: For both existing and new fairs, it is imperative that the students and
organizations are aligned about their purpose in offering the event. If the primary objective
for the companies attending a career-related event is to actively recruit, interview, and hire
students for employment and internship positions, then the event should be considered a
“job fair” and labeled as such. We do our students a disservice by using the label “career
fair” when the event is focused on employment and does little to support career
exploration broadly. On the other hand, if a goal of an event is to support career
exploration, then companies attending the event must be prepared to have meaningful
conversations with students eager to learn about a specific industry or company, without
the need to discuss potential employment. A middle ground for a career fair which seeks
to support both employment as well as more general career exploration is to allow
organizations to indicate their purpose in some manner which students have easy access to
( both at the physical booth as well as through any electronic information).
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Changes Instituted since 2019
Many of the recommendations above have already been worked on during the time of this
committee’s work, especially those related to the Fall Career Fair. A careful review of the Fall
Career Fair and how it serves the MIT community began when Ian Waitz assumed the role of the
Vice Chancellor in 2017. The Vice Chancellor and the Vice President for Student life, Suzy Nelson,
gathered key partners on campus to examine the Fall Career Fair’s purpose, structure and revenue
model. Based on declining employer participation, decline in revenue, dissatisfaction of students
in the fair serving all areas of interest, steps were taken to provide the fair with more oversight by
CAPD and to decouple the fair responsibility for funding student activities at MIT.
Since then, the Fall Career Fair oversight and student leadership supervision have become the full
responsibility of CAPD, made possible by the creation of a new Assistant Director for Career
Exploration Events and Fairs, and a Faculty Advisor was appointed to the Fall Career Fair. This
change in Fall Career Fair oversight was developed in collaboration with the 2018 Fall Career Fair
student directors, CAPD, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor including this Committee. All parties
involved believe that this change will improve the Fall Career Fair’s impact on career exploration
for all students by providing sustained, professional assistance to the student leadership. In
addition, CAPD oversight will enable a stronger connection with academic departments, offices,
and programs to help diversity employer recruitment and create complementary career
exploration opportunities and events offered around the Fall Career Fair.
References
Binder, A.J., Davis, D.B., & Bloom, N. (2015). Career funneling: How elite students learn to define
and desire “prestigious” jobs. Sociology of Education. Vol. 89, Issue 1, pp. 20 – 39.
39
4. Career Exploration Events
Our analysis in Chapter 2: Current State suggests career exploration is lacking support for:
● Undergraduate students that are undecided about their plans following their SB degree
● Undergraduate students that are considering graduate school following their SB degree
● Graduate students interested in internship experiences (see Chapter 6: Graduate Student
Internships).
In general, we believe that MIT must be more strategic in its career exploration offerings to target
students who may be early in their studies or who have uncertainty about their current career
trajectories. Key aspects of this strategy are to:
● Create opportunities to learn about a range of careers

● Foster career development skills
● Offer low commitment opportunities to “prototype” different paths
We suggest that a holistic approach to career exploration involves not only thinking along the
chain with regard to individuals (learning, fostering skills, trying out different things) but
programmatically. This means making sure we are offering a range of activities across a student’s
trajectory, in a variety of formats, and involving people from faculty, peers, and alumni to
prospective employers.
Examples of Career Exploration Opportunities
The following exploration events and activities are examples of low commitment opportunities for
career exploration. Most of these opportunities already exist at MIT though frequently within
specific departments. Thus, what is also needed is an effective manner to ensure students are
aware of them (see Chapter 5: Career Exploration Hub).
Orientations
First Year Pre-Orientation Programs (FPOPs) currently offer are broad range of topics, from
discovering various careers to learning about academic pathways. In the current model, students
are unable to participate in more than one. Offering shorter FPOP opportunities or providing FPOP
topics more than once a year (i.e. IAP or spring break) could be a way to leverage existing efforts
while providing greater career and major exploration for first year undergraduate students.
Furthermore, this model should also be offered to graduate students to help them explore
potential pathways beyond academia.
Internships & Fellowships
40
Internships provide real, practical, professional experience that also allows students to explore
different opportunities first-hand. In this way, students can “prototype” different careers--testing
their assumptions of a career in a practical setting that can help inform their future decision
making. Several offices, departments, centers, and programs help connect students to internship
opportunities. For example, SHASS supports the MIT DC Summer Program, SAP/DUSP supports
internships over IAP, as well as during the semester through the Planning in Practice course, and
SOE supports summer internships through CEE. The PKG center also provides fellowships for
undergraduate students working over the summer.
Panel Discussions
Comprised of alumni, employers, or peers, panel discussions allow for multiple perspectives to be
shared with an audience. Panels can target different student levels (e.g. 1st-year undergraduate,
seniors, post-Docs, etc.), affinity groups (e.g. minority students, international students, students
considering careers in academia, etc.), or industries/sectors/occupational groups. Topics can
range from the tangible (i.e. different careers/courses, industries) to the more abstract (i.e. future
of work, trends). Panel events can be recorded and archived so that students can benefit from the
information even if they are unable to attend the panel.
Networking Events
Through allowing students to informally mix with others, they might start to learn about different
opportunities that they are interested in and expand their network. Networking events could
feature employers, alumni, faculty, or peers, depending on the topic. For example, first year
students interested in learning about different majors might appreciate an opportunity to meet
with faculty and upperclassmen in that major. Students preparing to enter the job market, might
benefit from connecting with employers and alumni. These events could follow panels or lightning
talks, or stand alone. Graduate students could also provide an excellent networking opportunity
for undergraduate students.
Site-Visits & Excursions

Site-visits and excursions allow the student to immerser themself into different environments for
purposes of exploration. Several departments, programs, and offices support career exploration
outside of campus as well. CAPD provides employer site visits, typically over IAP, that allow
students to visit a wide breadth of employers from varying industries in the Boston / Cambridge
vicinity. DUSP organizes annual Career Treks to NYC alum employers. AeroAstro sponsors an IAP
trip for its sophomores to major aerospace companies on the West Coast.
Externships & Job Shadows

Job shadows are an opportunity for students to observe work being done first-hand. MIT Alumni
provide an opportunity during IAP for students to complete an externship. In addition to this
program, similar programs around spring break and summer can also provide opportunities for
students to explore through shadowing. Employers can help facilitate job shadow opportunities to
allow students to gain insight into their business or organization. Faculty and graduate students
could provide opportunities for undergraduate students to shadow their laboratory work.
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Other schools provide different opportunities for students to explore careers. Similar to FPOP, the
University of Chicago offers “Career Exploration Week,” a four-day intensive for new students to
explore one of nine different areas of interest, including business, digital media, law, and public
policy prior to the start of their time at the University of Chicago. This program takes place in
different parts of the world in an immersive way, and there is an additional cost associated with
participation.
Mentorship Programs
Mentoring can take several forms, and MIT provides a variety of existing programs to support
mentorship, including the MIT Alumni Advisors Hub, Pre-Health Advising’s HMS/MIT MD-PhD
Mentoring Program, and the MechE Alliance, among others. Mentorship programs can be either
formal or informal, structured or unstructured.
Groups
Another way for students to explore interests is to connect with similar-minded students, such as
the Consulting Club at MIT, the Water Club, and the Premedical Society. These organizations can
help students start to explore their interests, learn about their values, and make life-long
connections with others. Clubs and student organizations organize conferences (MIT FinTech
Conference), participate in competitions (Design/Build/Fly at the AIAA), or run campus-wide
recruiting events (the Fall Career Fair Committee). The MIT Engage platform lists 564
organizations and the Association of Student Activities oversees the application to form new
groups on campus.
Classes and Seminars

Though somewhat more of a commitment, courses and seminars are effective for career
exploration, for not only undergraduate students but graduate students as well. The Office of the
First Year maintains a current listing of Exploration and Discovery subjects that are designed for
first year undergraduate students to consider a variety of majors prior to declaring. Examples
include Biological Engineering 20.S90: A 3-unit subject that introduces students to Courses 2, 3, 5,
6, 7, 9, 10, and 20, and the First-year Advising Seminar, “Designing your Life” (16.A01), focused on
career development skills based on the Stanford d.school subjects “Designing your Life” and
“Designing your Stanford”.
One concern with offering full subjects dedicated to career exploration was raised through the
Freshmen / Alumni Summer Internship Program (F/ASIP): A 3-unit career development seminar
organized by CAPD between 1997-2017. Although the program garnered student interest with
registration being as high as 123 students, F/ASIP struggled with student retention, with the
lowest being 43%. Students cited prioritizing academics over the career development and
exploration. Therefore, perhaps the approach should be incorporating the above career
exploration opportunities into existing subjects in support of the principle that career exploration
should be a shared and collective responsibility.
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Career Exploration Conference
Several of the above events could be combined into a conference-format. Offered in a single day,
the conference provides separate “tracks” whereby undergraduate and graduate students can
attend a series of events specific to their interests, selected/intended course, and/or target
industry/occupational group. By providing students with a choice on what they can attend, a
potential side-effect of their autonomy may increase their commitment to participate in the full
day.
One function of a Career Exploration Conference would be for conversation, information

collection, and building knowledge about industries, professions, and academic pathways. The
pressure of knowing what you want already (common with the typical Career Fair experience)
would be removed, lowering the bar for engaging in conversation and information sharing. All too
often traditional career fairs amount to job fairs and leave little room for rich conversation,
self-discovery, and exploration.
Some possibilities which we have discussed around timing of this event, but have not reached a
conclusion include:
● Holding the Career Exploration Conference on the September student holiday and move the
Career Fair to the Tuesday following Columbus Day (which is also a student holiday).
● Starting a Career Exploration Conference on the evening before the Career Fair and hold
Career Exploration sessions overlapping with the Career Fair for the morning. This could
also include pushing the start time for the Career Fair back an hour or so.
● Offering a Career Exploration Conference targeting first-year students and new-to-campus
graduate students during orientation.
Regardless of the timing of events, if career exploration is a primary goal for our students, it is
important for the Institute to prioritize and incentivize access to these events for students.
Anecdotally, students have limited time to attend events outside of their curriculum
responsibilities, so in addition to subjects incorporating additional exploration activities, the
Institute may need to take steps to ensure that participation in career exploration events is
encouraged and with a minimal barrier to participation. With respect to undergraduate students,
the combination of Exploratory and Discovery subjects may be a good mechanism for that.
Recommendations
1. Expand Career Exploration Opportunities: Develop new and continue to support existing
effective career exploration opportunities emphasis on: creating opportunities to learn
about a range of careers, in particular those careers for which graduate education is
needed; fostering career development skills; and providing low commitment opportunities
to “prototype” different paths. Four specific recommendations are:
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a. Expand FPOP opportunities beyond orientation (e.g. IAP) and/or shorten format to
allow first year undergraduate students to engage in more than one.
b. Develop and/or continue micro/short opportunities for career exploration such as
informational interviews, externships, and job shadowing that could occur during
evenings, weekends, and breaks.
c. Provide additional funding to support student participation in exploratory activities
such as conferences, internships, treks, research opportunities and more.
d. Collaborate more closely with career-exploration focused student clubs and
organizations such as the Society of Women Engineers and the Consulting Club in
the offering of career related programming.
2. Career Exploration Conference: Consider the development of a focal point event for career
exploration at MIT, i.e. a Career Exploration Conference. This conference would serve all
students across levels (undergraduate, masters, and doctorates), interests, disciplines,
backgrounds, etc.
3. Resetting the Career Exploration Timeline: Independent of the development of a Career

Exploration Conference, advocate for longer timelines for employment (internship and full
time) offer decisions as described previously in the report.
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5. Career Exploration Hub
In Fall 2018, a Career Exploration Opportunities survey was sent to faculty, administrators and
student organizations in an effort to review aspects and activities associated with student career
exploration and to identify changes that would enhance exploration of, and access to, a broad
range of careers. Administering and collecting survey data was challenging. The committee
struggled to identify survey recipients and gather thorough information on all career related
opportunities. The lack of a composite website or list resulted in an inefficient use of time
conducting web research, time most students cannot afford.
The committee’s challenges in cataloging career exploration opportunities at MIT made it

apparent that the lack of an aggregate resource on career related opportunities contributes to the
barriers students experience in participating in career exploration. This barrier will be felt most
acutely by first-year undergraduates that are trying to find career-related information to help in
deciding their major. In addition, employers experience the very same challenge when trying to
understand the recruiting environment at MIT and in developing their recruitment strategy.
Goals for Centralization Resources

To better enable student career exploration, the committee recommends the creation of a central
resource for key stakeholders (students, administrators, faculty, employers and student
organizations) to provide:
● an easy method of finding and sorting career related opportunities for undergraduates,
graduate students, faculty and staff.
● a single portal for posting career related opportunities for administrators, employers and
student organizations.
Furthermore, the development of a central career exploration hub is critical to supporting the
principle that career exploration is a shared responsibility among the following key stakeholders:
Career Advising & Professional Development (CAPD), Academic Departments, Faculty,
Administrative Offices (ex. UPOP, GEL, Conference Services), Student Organizations, and the
Alumni Association. Each of these stakeholders organize their own individual events, job boards,
websites, calendars, seminars, employer engagement and more that could benefit from a
centralized platform or portal for promoting their opportunities to students.
Key Functionality
A central resource is a simple concept but can be complex to achieve at MIT. The ecosystem of the
Institute is one of innovation, autonomy, creativity and decentralization. While these are MIT’s
strengths, in this case it creates a challenging environment for herding all offerings and for
students to know where to look for career exploration opportunities, particularly if they are
seeking to look outside of “traditional” or more common paths for MIT students. The following key
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features and functionality are needed for stakeholders to invest time in a central system and find it
beneficial to helping them achieve their goals.
● General User Interface: Desktop and mobile-friendly system, allowing users to filter
content by interests, sign up for notifications, RSVP to events/postings and receive
automatic reminders for them.
● Access levels: Different levels of administrative access and customization permissions
should be available for key stakeholders to have autonomy on the offerings they provide
for specific student cohorts.
● Employer Engagement: Integration of all job boards / postings and interview
opportunities, including scheduling and payment, employer events in one platform for use
by appropriate stakeholders.
● Data Reporting: Track user engagement in events, programs, services and on-campus
recruiting activities.
● Calendar: Increase communication between and/or unify the following calendars for
consistency and ease of access: MIT events, CareerBridge, Engage and other calendars.
We recommend the use of Handshake to serve as the new central career exploration hub for MIT
with CAPD as the central administrator providing oversight and organization. Handshake has the
potential to serve as an enterprise wide system supporting events, career fairs, appointments,
data collection, on campus recruiting activities, job postings, and more. CAPD launched Handshake
in July 2019 as the new platform for CareerBridge which was formerly powered by GradLeaders.
While there are numerous off the shelf products available for consideration, some already tested
at MIT, it is recommended that Handshake be developed to serve our central hub needs as it
shows the most capability to meet numerous stakeholder needs. CAPD is already under contract
with Handshake, working closely with IS&T, and piloting the use of the system with the Chemistry
department for PhD interviews and Conference Services for posting company presentations.
The following are systems that have already been used at MIT by varying offices and for varying
individualized office purposes such as: GradLeaders, CampusLabs, Airtable, Engage, and Purple
Briefcase. Each of these have varying capabilities and have not been proven to be able to meet all
identified needs for a centralized career exploration hub. Outside of Handshake, Symplicity, Orbis,
and 12Twenty have some potential to meet varying degrees of stakeholder needs.
Implementation Process
To aid CAPD in the development and oversight of this central resource, we recommend the
creation of an advisory users’ group with representation from academic administrators, programs
like UPOP, conference services, and student organizers of career fairs. The implementation
process could be split into 5 different stages
1. Overview: Provide an overview of system features and training
2. Discovery: Identifying the goals, desired timelines, and expectations of the system to
supplement the stakeholder needs already identified (see Figure HUB-Stakeholder-Needs).
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3. Technical Implementation: Working with IS&T, the system vendor and stakeholders on the
development of technical aspects including: authentication, accounts, configuration, and
integration to other systems.
4. Customization and Consultation: Learning the ins and outs of the product. Application to
goals, changes and adjustments, moving towards implementation / launch.
5. Launch and User Adoption: Connection to stakeholders and resources across the institute.
Marketing plan, students/staff trainings, collateral development and branding.
Prioritization should be aimed at the promotion of career exploration activities and events in
2019-20, laying the foundation for a robust system utilized across the Institute to organize,
promote, and track career exploration opportunities in subsequent years.
Figure HUB-Stakeholder-Needs: Breakdown of stakeholder needs for proposed Career Exploration Hub.
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Recommendations
Our specific recommendations with respect to a career exploration hub are:

1. Empower CAPD with the task of curating all Career Exploration Opportunities in one
central location for the MIT community, i.e. the MIT Career Exploration Hub.
2. Develop Handshake (for the Career Exploration Hub) so that it can be used by all
departments, offices, programs, employers, and students organizations to promote career
exploration events, fairs, and resources in one location.
3. Create a Handshake Usergroup that gathers administrators, faculty, and students in the
development and expansion of the resource to support career exploration
4. Require all student organizations that run employer engagement opportunities (career
fairs, sponsorships, hackathons, etc.) to have events reviewed and approved by CAPD and
promoted through the new central Career Exploration Hub (Handshake)
5. Require all departments, offices, programs and administrators that run employer
engagement opportunities (career fairs, sponsorships, hackathons, etc.) to promote their
opportunities through the new central Career Exploration Hub (Handshake).
6. Organize a central database, maintained by CAPD, to house recruiter or employer

recruiting statuses, such as suspensions or violations of MIT policies, that is accessible to all
administrators and faculty who engage with employers for recruiting or sponsorship
activities.
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6. Graduate Student Internships
In this chapter, we study the culture at MIT around graduate students participating in internships,
compare the demand for graduate student internships against the current level of engagement to
identify unmet needs, understand the barriers that graduate students face while pursuing
internships at an institute as well as department level, and propose recommendations to lower
these barriers.
For this purpose, we define an internship as a period of work experience offered by an employer
to give students exposure to the working environment typically related to their field of study.
Internships can be as short as a week or as long as 12 months. They can be paid or voluntary.
Studies demonstrate that graduate students completing internships improve work-related skills,
grow their networks, and are more attractive to prospective employers[1-4]. Internships also
provide students with career development skills, while increasing students’ confidence in career
exploration and decision making. This is particularly important in the context of doctoral students
who wish to pursue non-academic careers, as there is evidence that such students have lower
confidence in their ability to make career decisions[4].
Key Findings
To better understand graduate student internships at MIT, we developed the Graduate Internship
Survey that was administered in 2019. The survey received 1400 responses from graduates across
MIT. Key findings from the survey are reported here. These findings are illustrated both
quantitatively (using response rate statistics) as well as qualitatively (based on statements given
in an open response question). More detailed information is available in the full results of the
survey, including breakdowns by schools and departments. If interested, please request access to
the 2019 Grad Internship Survey through Institutional Research.
Students are interested in a wide range of different career paths
As part of the survey, we asked student interest in careers in academia, government, and industry.
Students could select any level of interest for these career paths (e.g. a student could select Very
Interested for all three paths). The results are shown in Figure GSI-Career-Paths. Comparing first
responses by level, industrial career paths are the largest interest for both masters and doctoral
students, though interest in academic careers is nearly as high as industry for doctoral students.
School-to-school variations exist, though Architecture & Planning, Engineering and Science
graduate students have similar interests (industry being most interested and government being
least interested). Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences are most interested in academic careers.
Sloan, not surprisingly, is significantly interested in industrial career paths.
49
50
Figure GSI-Career-Paths: Responses to interest in Industry, Government, and Academic career paths.
Responses broken out by level (Masters and Doctoral) and School. 2019 MIT Graduate Student Internship
Survey.
Student participation rate in internships
While variation exists among schools, departments, and career path interests, in any of these
categories over 50% of respondents have had or are interested in having internships as graduate
students. In particular we note that over 60% of students that are very interested in an academic
career path indicate they would like or have had an internship as a graduate student.
(a) Responses by School
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(b) Responses by Department/Program
(c) Responses by career path very interested

Figure GSI-Interest: Responses to whether students have had or are interested in an internship experience.
2019 MIT Graduate Student Internship Survey.
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Benefits of a graduate student internship experience
71% of those who had an internship experience found it useful. Interestingly, a higher percentage
of PhD students found the internship useful in comparison to Masters students (75% versus 66%),
underscoring that benefit of internships for students focused on research. The bar charts below
shows the different ways in which internships benefit students, with similar results for PhD and
Masters students.
The following are illustrative comments from students about benefits of a graduate internship:
● Working in an intensely focused industry research lab with 100s of experts in the topic
propelled my knowledge forward much more quickly than a year in the PhD program here.
(Doctoral student, Architecture & Planning)
● I felt my internship was extremely empowering. I was not very confident in my abilities at MIT
but I was an expert at my internship. ( Doctoral student, Engineering)
● My internship was very useful for me in terms of networking outside of academia and helping
me to solidify career goals... the techniques and knowledge gained by a student during an
internship can go a long way to making a student more productive in their PhD pursuits.
(Doctoral student, Science)
● The internship I participated in was set up through the class 20.930/7.930: Research
Experience in Biopharma. This class was probably the closest thing to the PERFECT internship
experience for me. The internship requirements are only 10 hr per week for one semester. This
allowed just enough time to get a taste for lab work in pharma, and to network with a ton of
people, but did not cut into my personal research time too much. It was an amazing
opportunity and I would definitely look to them as a model for setting up accessible internship
programs in different departments. (Doctoral student, Science)
● I ultimately decided that academia was the career path I wanted to pursue, but I would not
have been able to make that informed decision without an internship experience in industry.
● Internships have been a very helpful way for me to stay grounded in the rest of the world
while I pursue my degree. I find myself applying lessons from the internship in class and
lessons from class in the internship. It's good to learn about more organizations and if I would
want to work there ( Masters student, Architecture & Planning)
● Doing a government internship was one of the most helpful experiences that I've had here at
MIT. It helped me clarify what career paths I was interested in and helped me expand my
network. (Masters student, Engineering)
● My internship experience was very valuable since it better shaped my future goals and
understand what I am interested in and made me aware of the interesting problems that
companies are trying to solve. ( Doctoral student, Science)
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Doctoral Masters
Figure GSI-Benefits: Responses to benefits offered by internships for Doctoral and Masters students. 2019
MIT Graduate Student Internship Survey.
Barriers for pursuing an internship
The bar chart below shows the major barriers reported by students who have not had an
internship experience (the percentages for immigration/legal issues have been reported for
international students only). In general, the barriers are perceived to be more severe by doctoral
students. The major barriers include on-campus research/academic/work requirements,
program structure, immigration/legal issues, and lack of knowledge about internship
opportunities, and lack of faculty support.
The following are illustrative comments from students about barriers of pursuing an internship:
● The research work needs to get done, one way or another. Sponsors need the work done in
order to continue sponsoring research. Sponsors/grant timelines don't magically go on hold
when you leave to go to an internship, but I wish I could just put it on hold in order to leave for
an internship with my PI's blessing. ( Doctoral student, Engineering)
● In my experience, the limiting factor on taking an internship would be the way that my
research and project obligations were structured make it nearly impossible to take time away.
● I found it hard to tell my PI that I want to do an internship, I think it would only work if my
department required one before graduating. It all depends on funding, I was funded from my
PI grants so felt pressure to contribute to research, also there is never a good time to go and
leave for 2-3mo maybe in the beginning of the program but then you feel like you want to get
started with research and not as much thinking what you want to do next after the PhD.
(Doctoral student, Engineering)
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● PI is not supportive of spending time doing fellowships bc she thinks that it's not worth my
time to think about the future while I am doing my thesis. This is very frustrating b/c I tend to
be a proactive person and I like the idea of exploring some career options on the side
especially since I don't want to do academia and I have told her this before in person.
(Doctoral student, Engineering)
● Internships are heavily discouraged. We call them the "i word". (Doctoral student,
Engineering)
● I feel that I will be letting my advisor down if I lose a summer of research for an internship,
but I am also worried about my job prospects if I don't get one. (Doctoral student,
Engineering)
● It is difficult to justify to professors the time away from lab on an internship. But, I think this is
an extremely important way to gain professional experience and potentially gain
employment. Making this an official part of the program would improve employment
prospects for graduate students. (Doctoral student, Engineering)
● Apart from wanting to save up my OPT until after I graduate, the biggest barrier to me doing
an internship during my time at MIT has been my research advisor's dislike for his students
showing interest in anything apart from academia. (Doctoral student, Science)
● … the internship was unpaid and I was luckily able to get internship funding [from my
program] to cover my expenses. This is not a possibility for all students at MIT, though, but it
should be. Funding for unpaid government/nonprofit/public service internships should be
something provided by the Institute. (Masters student, Engineering)
● I jumped straight into graduate school after undergrad with the intention of being a career
academic. I greatly enjoy my program, but sometimes I wonder if I should sample some other
opportunities outside of academia before committing myself to that path. Non-academic jobs
are a taboo subject in my academic community at MIT and in my field more broadly, though,
and so I don't feel comfortable raising these interests to my advisor, for fear I will be deemed
unserious or uncommitted to my academics. (Doctoral student, Architecture & Planning)
● Having to apply for work authorization from the government (OPT) was the biggest pain
point. It usually takes 3.5 months and $410 to obtain, and eats time from my post graduation
work time. Usually internships are advertised for immediate start or few months out. Having
the restriction to be able to start only after 3.5 months of accepting an offer made me lose
countless high value internship opportunities. The problem could be easily fixed if MIT offered
CPT work authorization. Also, having departments be open to students doing part time
internships would be a huge help when dealing with advisers or department administrators.
● The greatest barrier to doing an internship is the removal of CPT. The fact that OPT will get
used up discourages international students from pursuing an internship. (Doctoral student,
Engineering)
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Figure GSI-Barriers: Responses to barriers for internships for Doctoral and Masters students. 2018 MIT
Graduate Student Internship Survey.
The issues surrounding immigration can be significant for international students. Specifically,
international students will require authorization to pursue off-campus employment. For students
on a F-1 visa, this authorization could be obtained in two ways:
Curriculum Practical Training (CPT): Under Curricular Practical Training, all activity pursued
must be "directly related to the student's major area of study" and an integral part of the student's
established curriculum [8 CFR 214.2(f)(10)(i)]. Students pursuing an MIT degree have the option
of using CPT only BEFORE completion of their studies. CPT can be authorized full-time during the
annual vacation (summer and during IAP) and part-time (20 hours a week or less) during the
academic year in the following cases in which working off campus with a company must be either:
● a required component of the curriculum, which all students (including domestic students)
in the program must complete
● OR an internship that is evaluated by an MIT Professor, meets the criteria specified below,
and is granted academic credit under a specific course number in the student’s major
degree requirement
● AND the course and academic credit must count towards completion of the degree (must
fulfill an elective or mandatory credit that counts towards degree requirements)
● AND be enrolled in the specific internship/experiential learning course during the
academic term in which the experience is conducted and CPT is authorized (note: some
exceptions apply)
56
The challenges associated with a CPT include the following:
● As CPT has to count towards course/academic requirements for degree completion in
order to be authorized, students can exercise this option only if CPT is offered as an elective
or a mandatory course in their academic department. Only a small number of academic
programs at MIT provide an elective subject that meets the requirements for CPT and
almost none have it as a mandatory course.
● Even in departments where CPT is offered as an elective, students who have completed
their credit requirements for their degree are unable to exercise the option of using CPT
because it is no longer required to fulfill their degree requirements. In such cases, students
who wish to use CPT to complete an internship in the later years of their doctoral program
should plan in advance and reserve units for that purpose.
Optional Practical Training (OPT): OPT is a benefit authorized by U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services (USCIS) that extends the F-1 student status to allow international students
to work in the U.S.A. in order to gain practical training in their major field of study. Students who
have been in lawful, full-time student status for at least one full academic year are eligible for a
total of 12 months of OPT. Students may be authorized for 12 months of OPT and become eligible
for another 12 months of OPT when they change to higher education level (i.e., from Bachelors to
Masters; from Masters to PhD). The 12-month total limit of OPT applies to each educational level
(Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degree programs). Any period of OPT used before the
completion of the program is subtracted from the 12-month total limit.
Setting up an OPT is associated with the following disadvantages:

● Using OPT for an internship reduces the OPT time available to students post degree
completion. This is particularly of consequence when students wish to continue working in
the US and need to transition to H-1B visa status. H-1B visas are allocated using a lottery
system and every candidate is allowed a maximum of three attempts. Hence, there is a
preference to preserve OPT such that the lottery attempts can be maximized.
● To obtain OPT authorization, students have to file an application with the USCIS 90 days
before the internship, along with a fee (currently $410). Once an OPT application is
submitted, the start date and the end date of the internship cannot be changed and the fee
is non-refundable, which poses challenges to accommodate any changes in the work
contract.
● Students wanting to do an internship under OPT have to find an employer well in advance,
which could deter their access to internship opportunities that might be offered close to
start dates. For example, openings at startups might appear even closer to the start of the
internship.
● While OPT applications can be submitted only 90 days before the start of the internship,
the applications could take 90-120 days for processing. The uncertainty associated with the
57
timelines and government delays in processing these applications induces tensions in the
student-employer relation and heightened levels of stress amongst students. In cases of
extreme delays in processing OPT applications, employers could also rescind their
internship offers.
Recommendation
Adopt a Career and Professional Development Requirement for Graduate Students. W e believe
graduate students should be encouraged to consider a wide range of career exploration and
professional development opportunities during their studies. To do this, we recommend that all
programs adopt a flexible career and professional development requirement for graduate
students with an approximate load of 1 unit for masters and 2 units for doctoral students. While
we envision one option to satisfy this requirement is to perform an industry, government or
academic internship, many other options are possible depending on the interests of the individual
student. Regardless of the specific option, we would encourage that a short self-reflective report
be a part of the requirement. An example of such a requirement may be found in the Professional
Perspective Graduate Requirement in EECS, which is mandatory for all graduate students in EECS.
In addition to internship experiences, the EECS requirement can be satisfied by: attending
multiple industry colloquia; pursuing a joint project with the industry; delivering research
seminars in industry; or engaging in an activity focused on training for academia. Introducing such
a requirement could encourage students to think about their careers early in the course of their
graduate studies and adopt a more holistic approach towards career planning. Further, it would
also allow international students to obtain CPT authorization for doing an internship significantly
reducing the barriers associated with immigration/legal issues.
References
Experiential Learning Opportunities. (n.d.) Retrieved from
http://www.nihbest.org/build-career-development-program/experiential-learning-opportunities
Baas, T., Greenier, J., Stayart, A., Van Wart, A., Varayanis, S. (2017, May). Internships and
experiential learning. Conference session presented at the annual meeting of the Broadening
Experiences in Scientific Training. Orlando, FL.
Brady, A. A. and Petrie, K. A. (2017 May 8). Not just for undergrads. Inside Higher Education.
Caliendo, A., Morand, J., Gibeling, J. C., Lindstaedt, B., Moses, B., McGee, R., Naffziger-Hirsch, T. D. M.,
O’Brien, T. C., Schnoes, A. M. (2018), and Yamamoto, K. R. Internship Experiences Contribute to
Confident Career Decision Making for Doctoral Students in the Life Sciences. CBE-Life Sciences
Education, 17(16), 1-14.
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7. Alumni Engagement
MIT alumni/ae represent a significant resource to students and each other in the area of career
exploration and career/professional development. Integrating alumni/ae into this process aligns
well with the principles underpinning our overall approach and increases the likelihood of success
in reaching the objectives outlined at the start of this report. Engaging alum in this important
component of a student’s educational experience potentially extends, deepens and enhances the
reach and impact of the student’s curricular experience.
Methods employed by peer institutions and efforts already underway at MIT provide guidance and
a foundation on which to build. Future success in engaging alumni/ae in this important endeavor
is dependent upon actualizing a shared commitment among faculty, staff and alumni/ae.
Alumni Engagement at Peer Institutions
A survey of peer institutions was conducted to determine the nature and extent of alumni/ae
engagement in their career development activities. Responses are included in Appendix X.
Responses were received from Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Duke, which showed that
alumni/ae are engaged in student career development to varying degrees, in a range of formal and
informal ways through a variety of channels. Such activities include internships, mentoring
programs, career development events and online platforms, as well as shadowing, meet-ups,
informational interviews, and a number of other programs and events. Duke represents a model in
terms of approach, in that ‘depending upon the student degree level and the engagement
methodology, alumni are involved both formally and informally in virtually all expressions of
professional development both within several career centers and through academic departments,
interdisciplinary centers, cultural programs/centers, student organizations, the alumni association
and on and on…. Alumni are a critical asset in many/most dimensions of education at Duke. There is
no way to describe the range and structure easily as this is both a centralized and a decentralized
institutional asset.’ ( Duke Survey Response).
Alumni Engagement at MIT Today
Alumni/ae are currently engaged in student career development in a variety of ways at the
Institute. Programs and resources are offered centrally by the MIT Alumni Association and the
CAPD, as well as locally by departments and other groups. As noted earlier, this dispersed nature
of the provision of services not only is a challenge for students and administrators, but also for our
efforts in documenting the situation.
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MIT Alumni Association staff presented their programs to the committee. Individual follow-up
meetings were conducted with them as well as with key staff involved in other relevant programs.
Meetings were conducted with:
● Ellen Stahl of MIT AA, regarding Advisor Hub
● Danielle Reddy, re: alum engagement with students (eg Infinite Careers)
● Tianna Ransom, re: career-related alum engagement with students
● Elena Byrne, re: Externship Program
● Hyun-A Park, former President of MITAA
The MIT Alumni Association currently sponsors a number of programs aimed at engaging
alumni/ae in support of student career exploration and career development, most notably the
Externship program and the relatively recently introduced online platform, Advisor Hub.
Externship Program
Twenty years in, this is an opportune time to re-assess the value of the Externship Program.
Offered over IAP, the program provides students with the opportunity to connect with an
alumnus/a for experiences as brief as ‘shadowing’ to a month-long internship. Last year there
were 724 opportunities offered, about 262 of which did not get ‘taken.’ There were 1249 student
applicants, thus 787 students go ‘unplaced.’ Program administrators are trying to address the fact
that the offerings are heavily oriented toward Course 6. Another criticism is that many
opportunities are unpaid. Moreover, while the intent may be career exploration, many employers,
particular large employers, use the program for recruiting and see it as a pipeline, with the
alumnus/a as a sponsor in name only. Many employers have gone as far as to want students to
sign non-disclosure, non-compete agreements and to commit to a summer internship. Staff
proactively works to mitigate this. Staff identified the biggest challenges to this being a career
exploration opportunity are: the ‘pipeline problem;’ inadequate funding; and the perception that
this is an Alumni Association program removed from central career support for students.
Significant barriers to improvement are capacity – to run such a program successfully requires
higher touch and consequently more staff - and lack of funding.
Advisor Hub
Advisor Hub is an online platform that connects students with alumni/ae and alumni/ae with each
other for career advice, including general conversations, resume reviews, mock interviews, etc. In
its first year, 1800 alumni had signed up and 350 connections/conversations had taken place – all
with positive ratings.
Other Relevant MIT Alumni Association activities include:

● Medical mentorship program with Pre-health Advising
● Infinite Careers Program collaboration with CAPD
● Fall Career Fair collaboration with CAPD to increase diversity of opportunities
● X-terms collaboration: MIT AA staff have met with student organizers to develop ways to
engage more alumni in as hosts
● Alumni Leadership Conference
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● OGE dinner series – Dinner with 12 Strangers. (i.e. an alum can host a dinner with 12
graduate students)
● Community Catalyst Leadership Program ( leadership coaching program in which alum and
students meet individually on a monthly basis and discuss a variety of topics as well as
quarterly in more formal workshops organized by DSL focused on such topics as ethics,
networking, difficult conversations, etc.
Alumni Engagement at MIT Tomorrow
We propose an approach to career exploration and services that is characterized by complete

integration of alumni/ae engagement – an approach to student career exploration and
development in which alumni/ae engagement is ‘baked in,’ rather than a set of discrete programs.
These co-curricular activities and relationships would be managed in the hybrid structure of
central and regional/local levels. One can imagine a single MIT community of students, faculty and
alumni/ae in a variety of dynamic relationships. We argue that alumni are critical to any
‘..changes that would enhance exploration of, and access to, a broad range of careers …’a s stated in
our charge.
Engaging alumni/ae in this meaningful effort will strengthen the MIT community of students and
alumni/ae, and will also serve to strengthen, extend and enhance MIT’s connections with the
world beyond MIT and thus by extension promote MIT’s visibility and impact. It can support
student career exploration as well as alumni/ae career and professional development by
increasing exposure to career options and the world of work; facilitating meaningful and
potentially mutually beneficial connections among students and alumni/ae; and providing
opportunities for engagement in professional settings.
Recommendations:
1. Facilitate alumni/ae engagement in all career exploration and career development activities.
2. Involve alumni in leadership of MIT student career exploration.
Facilitate alumni/ae engagement in all career exploration and career development activities
Alum clearly have a valuable role to play in the career exploration activities described elsewhere
in this report. Alum can return to campus to give talks and participate in panels, sharing lessons
learned from their own experiences as students and professionals. They can collaborate in applied
research projects, participate in experiential learning classes and programs, and overall help to
ground academic learning through a professional lens. Students can also leave campus joining
alum in professional settings for informational interviews, shadowing opportunities, internships
and career treks (visits to alum employers.) These experiences can be an especially useful tools for
learning from the first-hand experiences of alum and investigating career options.
The potential for alumni/ae to make a serious contribution to experiential learning is significant.
Alumni/ae can be tapped to connect students to a variety of professional experiences and applied
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learning opportunities – whether it’s through D-Lab, MISTI, Global Education or the PKG Center.
Full-time and part-time internships, fellowships, applied coursework and client-driven research
projects all can provide opportunities to explore practical applications of topics discussed in class,
and allow students to build professional skillsets while exploring career pathways.
In addition to field-specific knowledge, alumni/ae, as former students themselves, have a unique

understanding of what it means to be a student at MIT. Efforts to include alum in supporting
students in these ways, brings the added benefit of engaging them as active members of a vibrant
MIT community.
Online platforms represent a significant opportunity for expanding the reach and deepening
connections among alum and between alum and students. The MIT Alumni Association platform
currently sponsors Advisor Hub, ‘an online platform that facilitates one to one career conversations
with alumni volunteers who are willing to chat and share career and professional advice.’
Finally, the alumni/ae place in MIT’s new Kendall Square space could be used to support alumni
engagement in student career exploration. The alumni/ae place can be used to increase the
visibility of alumni/ae activities and facilitate face-to-face engagement on an individual basis or
with groups. Having a specific physical place associated with alumni presence can serve to
heighten awareness, visibility and impact of alumni/ae engagement, and serve as a material
resource, which also has symbolic impact.
Involve alumni in leadership for MIT student career exploration
Alumni members (likely through MIT AA) should be included in the proposed Student Career
Exploration and Development Committee. This will encourage coordination and increase the
impact alumni can have on the MIT community.
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Appendix A: Committee Charge and Membership
The goals of the MIT Committee on Student Career Exploration and Services are to review aspects
and activities associated with student career exploration and services, and to identify changes that
would enhance exploration of, and access to, a broad range of careers in a manner that best
serves student needs. Specifically, the committee is charged with:
1. Reviewing how MIT students currently explore careers and prepare themselves for the
process of seeking a career, and their level of access to a diverse range of internships,
full-time employment, and graduate and professional degree opportunities;
2. Evaluating student needs (by year, degree type, and academic program);
3. Evaluating employer needs;
4. Evaluating current career events and activities, including the fall Career Fair and those
offered by other student organizations, departments and MIT offices;
5. Recommending a set of principles, objectives and measurable outcomes for career
exploration and services at MIT;
6. Recommending options to enhance career exploration and services and increase access to a
diverse range of internships, full-time employment, and graduate and professional degree
opportunities.
Committee members:
Scott Alessandro (Sloan)
Margaret Bertoni (Career Fair)
Isaiah Borne (Career Fair: departed committee in June 2018)
Gustavo Burkett (DSL)
Alkiviadis Chatzivasileiou (GSC: joined committee in September 2018)
Mary Jane Daly (SA+P)
David Darmofal (SOE, Chair)
Linda Griffith (SOE)
Lisa Guay (GSC)
Kathryn Jiang (UA)
Chris Kaiser (SOS)
Tamara Menghi (GECD)
Simantini Mitra-Behura (UA)
Melanie Parker (GECD)
Krithika Ramchander (GSC)
Vaibhavi Shah (Career Fair: joined committee in July 2018)
T.L. Taylor (SHASS)
Drew Weibel (Career Fair: departed committee in June 2018)
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Appendix B: Catalog of Career Exploration Committee Recommendations
The committee has identified seven key recommendations with accompanying action steps that
aim to address each of the four outlined career exploration objectives in this report.
Recommendation 1: Create a Committee on Student Career Exploration and Development
A. Compose a committee of faculty, CAPD, and other staff, students, alumni to discuss career
exploration and development issues, challenges, and advocate for change and new opportunities.
B. Implement an Institute-wide continuous improvement process for career exploration.
C. Charge with ensuring a holistic oversight of career exploration and development, including,
critically, career fairs
D. Develop holistic career fair strategy that includes standards, clarity of purpose, and objectives to
serve all students at MIT and a wide range of career interests.
E. Advocate for the use of revenue from all career fairs to be used for the purpose of funding career
exploration and development opportunities
F. Advocate for change around gender salary inequality and unfair recruiting practices
Recommendation 2: Support Exploration for Graduate School

A. Increase the representation of (MIT and non-MIT) UROPs and graduate schools at the Fall Career
Fair and other fairs.
B. Develop funding to assist students pursuing research-related summer experiences
C. Incentivize career exploration opportunities that are graduate school focused within academic
departments and domains.
Recommendation 3: Reset the Career Exploration Timeline
A. Move the Fall Career Fair to end of October

B. Increase events, including breadth of scope, leading up to the Fall Career Fair that support career
exploration for first year students and others still exploring.
C. Stand as a leader and mobilize peer universities to push back on the aggressive and early student
hiring practices.
D. Create policy that employers automatic offer extension if they are considering pursuing graduate
school or non-profit/civic sector work
E. Advocate for longer timelines for employment (internship and full time) offer decisions
Recommendation 4: Expand Career Exploration Opportunities

A. Expand FPOP opportunities beyond orientation (e.g. IAP) and/or shorten format to allow first year
undergraduate students to engage in more than one. In addition, incorporate Graduate Student
pre-orientation programs.
B. Develop and/or continue micro / short opportunities for career exploration such as informational
interviews, externships, and job shadowing that could occur during evenings, weekends, and
breaks.
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C. Provide additional funding to support student participation in exploratory activities such as
conferences, internships, treks, research opportunities and more.
D. Collaborate more closely with career-exploration focused student clubs and organizations such as
the Society of Women Engineers and the Consulting Club in the offering of career related
programming.
E. Create a Career Exploration Conference, separate of any recruiting activities, allowing students to
learn about different career paths as well as general career development concepts
Recommendation 5: Create a Career Exploration Hub
A. Empower CAPD with the task of curating all Career Exploration Opportunities in one central
location for the MIT community
B. Develop Handshake so that it can be used by all departments, offices, programs, employers, and
students organizations to promote career exploration events, fairs, and resources in one location.
C. Create a Handshake User Group that gathers administrators, faculty, and students in the
development and expansion of the resource to support career exploration.
D. Require all student organizations that run employer engagement opportunities (career fairs,
sponsorships, hackathons, etc.) to have events reviewed and approved by CAPD and promoted
through the new central Career Exploration Hub (Handshake).
E. Require all departments, offices, programs and administrators that run employer engagement
opportunities (career fairs, sponsorships, hackathons, etc.) to promote their opportunities through
the new central Career Exploration Hub (Handshake).
F. Organize a central database, maintained by CAPD, to house recruiter or employer recruiting
statuses, such as suspensions or violations of MIT policies, that is accessible to all administrators
and faculty who engage with employers for recruiting or sponsorship activities.
Recommendation 6: Adopt a Career & Professional Development Requirement for Graduate

Students
A. Seek to have all graduate programs at MIT adopt a flexible career and professional development
requirement for all graduate students with an approximate load of 1 unit for masters and 2 units for
doctoral students. One option to satisfy this requirement should be an industry, government or
academic internship, however, other options should be possible and supported. A short
self-reflective report should be a part of the requirement.
Recommendation 7: Increase Alumni Engagement
A. Involve alumni in leadership of MIT student career exploration through the proposed Committee on
Student Career Exploration
B. Increase alumni/ae engagement in all career exploration and development activities
C. Leverage the Alumni Advisors Hub in new ways to expand the reach and connections made
between alum and students.
D. Utilize the new alumni/ae place in MIT's new Kendall Square space to support alumni engagement
in student career exploration through individual student opportunities and group programming.
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Appendix C: Undergraduate Career Exploration and Service Needs
Literature Review
Programs and services offered by peer institutions were reviewed, along with a review of articles,
journals, and relevant professional organizations for gathering insight on best practices and models
for serving undergraduate student career exploration. There were three general findings about the
influences on a student’s career exploration that were noteworthy for this report to consider when
making recommendations.
● An emphasis on the Career Service Center (CSC) as the sole contributor toward students’
career development is misplaced, given that other factors, such as social capital and family
influences, have been documented as influencing college students’ career-related outcomes.
In general, students participating in focus groups felt that CSC programs, tools, and services
were useful and beneficial. However, for students needing support related to an individual
disciplinary focus and/or with choosing or changing a career path, services missed the
mark. In particular, international students and first-generation college students were more
likely to find their needs unmet. (see “Table 2. Themes of Students’ Positive and Negative
Experiences with CSC” in Appendix I) (Chin, Blackburn Cohen, & Hora, 2018)
● Students participating in focus groups identified three main sources contributing to their
enhanced willingness to explore: family advice and support, career advising, and their work
supervisors. (Chin, Blackburn Cohen, & Hora, 2018)
● The results of the latest student workforce readiness survey from McGraw-Hill Education
show that career service centers are a relatively underused campus resource: About 1/4 of
college students say they have never used career services and just 14% say they use career
services frequently. Less than 1/3 of students believe that the career offices are effective.
(Katz, 2015)
In addition to the general findings about influence on career development, four themes were identified
that can help MIT develop specific strategies and goals for improving the career exploration
experience for undergraduate students.
Theme #1: Undergraduate students benefit from exploring careers and building professional skills as
early as possible.
● During informal conversations with undergraduate students, some common themes
emerged: More career exploration is needed even before college, and students were less
concerned with picking the right major than they were with choosing classes that would
expose them to new subjects or help them connect ideas across disciplines. (Selingo, 2012)
● Career advising is not as structured or proactive as many students need. A benefit to both
the student and the college would be to intertwine career exploration and academic
advising within a defined curriculum no later than the first semester of the student’s
sophomore year. (Ragan, 2018)
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● Career service centers should provide a space for students to reflect and explore the
influences and events that led them to where they are, including creating opportunities for
students to engage with consistent career professionals over time. Narrative exercises
enable students to better understand their own life themes and their vocational interests,
and generate further exploration of career options. (Chin, Blackburn Cohen, & Hora, 2018)
● While groups have long been used for career counseling, more contemporary perspectives
on the career exploration process, in which a complex interplay among multiple internal
and external factors affect career development, indicate the characteristic strengths of
group work make it a good fit for career exploration and decision-making. Sample group
activities could include: career research skills, forming a working relationship with another
group member, Holland codes, values assessments, awareness of internal and external
factors influencing academic and career decision-making, occupational family trees, and
development of a career flow chart. (Campbell, Champe, & Pimpleton-Gray, 2017)
● Some employers felt that career services spend too much time on the mechanics of how to
get a job, and not enough on how to do a job, and feel that a Sophomore year “What is a
Professional?” seminar would be useful. (CERI Research Brief, 2013)
Theme #2: Undergraduate career exploration trends can vary by degree program and career focus.
Arts and Sciences/Liberal Arts students
● Students are being recruited for marketing sales, and human resources positions as well as
finance and purchasing/inventory functions, positions that assume the domain of business
departments. (CERI Research Brief, 2013)
● Arts & Sciences students stumble during the recruiting process in three areas: expressing
career interests clearly, having appropriate and sufficient pre-professional experiences, and
expressing realistic expectations for their first job. (see “Table 6. Employer Expectations
During the Recruiting Process” in Appendix I) (CERI Research Brief, 2013)
● Many academic leaders and some public observers worry about the adverse effects of too
much emphasis on pre-professional studies and employability instead of a focus on the
liberal arts and general education. (Katz, 2015)
Business students
● A 2015 study found that business students choose majors that align well with their abilities
and skills, and tend to be sensitive to the issue of job availability. Social influences (parents,
teachers, counselors, and friends) appear to be important as well. Male business students in
particular seem to base career decisions on the future salary potential. The study also found
that the presence of other women in business did not impact female students' decision to
major in the field. However, this could be because female students have not been exposed
to particularly successful businesswomen. The authors believe that both high schools and
colleges should focus on getting prominent female business leaders to speak and offer
workshops. (Geyfman, Force, & Davis, 2015)
● Marketing in particular tends to be viewed through a very narrow lens. To the extent that
students hold negative perceptions, such as lack of quantitative analysis or rigor, of the
major, marketing will have difficulty attracting strong students. Shadowing opportunities
with marketing professionals, invitations for marketing practitioners to speak, and more
marketing career and advice is needed. (Cobb-Walgren, Pilling, & Barksdale, 2017)
Information Technology/Information Systems students
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● Top motivators for students choosing the field of information systems included love of
technology, job security, gratifying work, and level of income. It is important that students
have an accurate view of the profession and that they’re aware of the opportunities the
profession affords them. Potential avenues for accomplishing this include: appropriately
marketing the major and profession, highlighting current trends in the job market, honestly
discussing opportunities in the field, fostering a connection with technology at many levels
(not just programming), expanding the general perception of what an information system
major or professional is, and building a solid foundation and reputation by successfully
working with industry and placing students in beneficial roles. (Brooks, Korzaan, &
Ceccucci, 2014)
Theme #3: Many institutions are developing and/or implementing a career exploration curriculum
that spans all four years of a student’s time as an undergraduate.
● To successfully revive the liberal arts, professional preparation activities and the staff that
lead them must be integrated into the developmental process from the beginning of a
student’s course of study, not relegated to the eight or nine months prior to graduation.
(CERI Research Brief, 2013)
● College students are well-served by a mandatory, credit-bearing, four-year course of study
that synthesizes key aspects of academic and career counseling into one setting, ideally led
by a mentor, and focuses on things such as the freshman experience, and personal and
professional development. (Ragan, 2018)
● In Fall 2014, Manhattanville College created a replacement for its 40+ year old Portfolio
System using a design thinking process. The goal was to increase students’ active
participation in becoming career-ready in a quickly changing workforce, given that
employers need graduates who know how to learn new things. Reflection is a key
component of the program, as students develop greater awareness and understanding of
their own preparedness and can use this information to develop new skills and knowledge.
(Carson, Hannum, & Dehne, 2018)
● Albion College introduced the Albion Advantage in 2011, an intentional, four-year
educational model blending a liberal arts foundation with career readiness. All students are
matched with a faculty mentor and an alumni mentor, encouraged to pursue multi-year
academic research projects with real-world applications as well as off-campus experiences
with a clear connection to their majors and complete a four-year career plan with guidance
from the campus Career and Internship Center and faculty mentors. (Katz, 2015)
● Mount Holyoke College developed an initiative called the Lynk, a program comprising four
developmental stages: goal setting, professional development, practical experience, and
launch. The last stage includes a series of public symposia for students to showcase what
they've learned both in the classroom and out of it, and to demonstrate the connection
between those worlds. There is no single prescribed path through the four stages. Instead,
students work closely with multiple mentors and advisors drawn from the faculty, the
career development center, and specialized academic centers on campus. (Katz, 2015)
● University of Minnesota developed a constructivist career course that integrates
trait/factor, developmental, and postmodern perspectives. The course draws from three
major perspectives of career development: career as self-realization, career as growing
experiences, and career as context conceptualization. (Grier-Reed & Conkel-Ziebell, 2009)
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a. The course begins with contemplation rather than action and the curriculum takes
into account the five-stage transtheoretical model of change. Module 1 explores the
past and present, Module 2 constructs the future, and Module 3 focuses on planning,
action, and integration. All modules include the constructivist tools of narrative,
action, construction, and interpretation.
b. Outcome studies of the course have found significant increases in students' career
decision self-efficacy and significant decreases in students' dysfunctional,
self-defeating thoughts. Authors believe that developing students' self-concepts and
subjective careers are integral to the success of the course.
● Faculty within the Computer Information Systems (CIS) Department at Cal Poly Pomona
(CPP) instituted a new course to introduce incoming freshman and transfer students into
the major. The class design is based on research about attracting students to CIS
(particularly members of under-represented groups such as females and minorities),
retaining females in the profession, and the positive effects of pair programming (students
working together to produce a single product and alternating between the roles of coding
and research/review). The course plan includes: an overview of student support resources,
exposure to widely varied types of IT work, a focus on networking, visits from alumni,
professional organizations, and the career center. (Soe, Guthrie, Yakura, & Hwang, 2012)
Theme #4: Employers are seeking a combination of “soft” skills with technical skills among the pool of
undergraduate students entering the job market.
● Frequently mentioned strategies to increase Arts & Sciences students’ value: gain relevant
experience, adjust curriculum, and ensure student development in non-disciplinary based
skills such as teamwork, leadership, and initiative as well as appropriate work behaviors
such as patience, persistence and accountability. (CERI Research Brief, 2013)
● Career-focused college programs must provide students with a strong base from which to
secure employment, but they should also help students learn skills and behaviors necessary
for success. Students need to have a broader understanding of how their work fits into their
sector and know how to adapt quickly to changes so they can continue to succeed in their
field, or change fields, if necessary. They should learn how to work collaboratively with
peers to solve problems, to communicate their ideas, and to negotiate on their own behalf.
(American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2017)
● College graduates in every field need to master a blend of technical training as well as
socio-emotional, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills so they can perform effectively
at work, participate meaningfully in community and civic affairs, and pursue lifelong
learning. (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2017)
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(Final Report and Recommendations from The Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education).
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Brooks, N., Korzaan, M., & Ceccucci, W. (2014). A Preliminary Comparison of Student and Professional
Motivations for Choosing Information Systems. Information Systems Education Journal. v12 n4 pp. 49-55
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Campbell, J., Champe, J., & Pimpleton-Gray, A. (2017). A Career Exploration and Decision-Making
Psychoeducational Group: Supporting Undergraduate Students and Training Graduate Students. v4 n1.
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_Number_1_-1.pdf#page=9
Carson, A., Hannum, G., & Dehne, C. (2018). Manhattanville College’s Atlas Program: Designing a Road Map to
Success in College and Beyond. International Journal of ePortfolio. v8 n1 pp. 73-86.
Chin, M. Y., Blackburn Cohen, C. A., & Hora, M. T. (2018). The Role of Career Services Programs and Sociocultural
Factors in Student Career Development. Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of
Wisconsin-Madison Working Paper No. 2018-8.
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Cobb-Wagren, C., Pilling, B., & Barksdale, H. (2017). Does Marketing Need Better Marketing? A Creating
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Scholarship of Teaching. v 11 n1 pp. 97-117. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1167336.pdf
Collegiate Employment Research Institute (CERI) Research Brief. (2013). An Arts & Science Degree: Defining its
Value in the Workplace.
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Fouad, N., Ghosh, A., Chang, W., Figueiredo, C., & Bachhuber, T. (2016). Career Exploration Among College
Students. Journal of College Student Development. v57 n4 pp 460-464. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/619496
Geyfman, V., Force, C., & Davis, L. (2015). Women in Business: Influences on the Undergraduate Major Choices.
Administrative Issues Journal: Connecting Education, Practice, and Research. v5 n2 pp. 51-63.
Grier-Reed, T. & Conkel-Ziebell, J. (2009). Orientation to Self and Career: Constructivist Theory and Practice in
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Katz, P. (2015). Innovations in Teaching and Learning Research Brief 3: Career Preparation and the Liberal Arts:
CIC PRoject on the Future of Independent Higher Education. Council of Independent Colleges.
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International Students. v6, Issue 2 pp. 478-500. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1094890.pdf
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Stewart, V. (2005). The Career Fair Project: A Ten Year Experiment in Performance-Based Learning. College
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71
Appendix D: Graduate Student Career Exploration and Service Needs
Literature Review
The graduate working group conducted a study of current literature regarding career exploration
and services needs for graduate students. The following represents a summary of key findings by
themes, based upon 13 articles, reports, and book selections, with a list of references provided
after the summary.
Theme #1: The career development support needs of graduate students is more complex than
undergraduate students. Additionally, doctoral and research master’s students typically need
more help with career exploration than specialized/professional master’s program.
● Graduate students represent a greater diversity of backgrounds, nationalities, and life
experiences than undergraduates and require unique support services. Doctoral students
in particular face the challenge of working closely with a single academic advisor, a
relationship that heavily impacts students’ futures (Geraci & Kircher 2011).
● Students in professional master’s programs are less likely to need non-academic advising
student services, because their programs are typically of shorter duration and they are
naturally surrounded by a greater variety of peers and mentors (Geraci & Kircher 2011).
● Researchers noted that doctoral students report stronger perceptions of becoming a
competent professional in their field of choice than those pursuing master’s degrees and
they were less likely to identify “career change” as an important reason for graduate
studies. However, both groups experienced a decline in satisfaction with career
preparation at the midway through their programs of study, which may suggest a need for
greater faculty and career professional engagement and support to students at this point.
Both groups cited achieving professional goals as their top reason for attending graduate
school. (Hardré, & Hackett, 2015).
Theme #2: Graduate students in research or academic fields of study need advising and support
in exploring a wide range of career options. The timing of these services is important.
● Although graduate students are in an academic field of study specialized beyond the
bachelor’s degree, many enter their graduate studies as a way to explore career options
and would benefit from services designed to help them identify and explore their career
interests (Woolston, 2015).
● There is a disconnect between the doctoral market and career interests/needs. Students
often lack knowledge of the skills needed for particular jobs and were unable to self-assess
their fit (Laursen, Thiry, & Loshbaugh H., 2012).
● Supporting the enhancement of graduate student agency is important, including
encouraging multiple career paths, facilitating networking and offering mentoring and
guidance. (Meara, Jaeger, Eliason, Grantham, Cowdery, Mitchall, & Zhang, 2017)
72
● Students who engage in broad career exploration experience greater career satisfaction,
motivation, persistence, organizational and occupational commitment. (Stumpf, Calarelli, &
Hartman, 1983)
● Those enrolled in research master’s and doctoral programs need:
○ Increased exposure to a wider range of career options
○ Preparation for the labor market
○ Help connecting with non-academic careers and feeling comfortable with nonlinear
career paths
○ Job search support
○ Help with career-related emotional issues. (Hardré & Hackett, 2015)
● Students should engage in career planning from the beginning of their degree program. Too
often, doctoral students focus all of their efforts on completing their dissertation, waiting
until their final year to start thinking about the job search. Researchers found that the most
successful students, are the ones who think about the job search from the first year of their
graduate studies (Albert and Attis, 2010).
● These stages of doctoral student development/milestones are noted, with significant
differences in satisfaction with overall graduate experience; satisfaction with program of
study; and perception of career preparation. All of these characteristics are the lowest at
the midpoint stage.
○ Entry-Main goals are to maintain motivation, manage academic demands, and
develop a clear sense of purpose and direction. May lack direction, experience
self-doubt, lose professional self-esteem, and international students add cultural
adjustment issues.
○ Engagement-Main goals are self-preservation and achievement. Often roles are
established, responsibilities become routine, and confidence is restored. Challenges
may include procrastination, fear of failure, changing career goals, lack of mentors,
and balancing roles.
○ Exit-Main goals are disengagement and reintegration. Challenges may include lack
of control of timeline, managing others’ expectations, searching for career
alternatives, disillusionment with job market, and fear. (Lehker & Furlong, 2006),
(Geraci & Kircher, 2011)
● The life of a doctoral student can be very isolating. It is important for students to have
contacts outside of the department setting. Students with satisfying graduate experiences
may be better able to market themselves to future employers and maintain a strong
connection to the university (Geraci & Kircher, 2011).
● A career exploration best practice is support for internships or summer jobs. Few doctoral
students attempt them and few universities actively support them, a number of contacts
suggested that giving students an opportunity to gain experience outside of academia could
help them decide if that path is of interest to them while at the same time improving their
resume. (Albert & Attis, 2010).
73
Theme #3: Science and engineering doctorate recipients report the lowest rates of employment in
academia among all doctorate recipients.
● The highest rates of academic employment commitments were reported by doctorate
recipients in humanities and arts (76%) and in other non-science and engineering fields
(76%) while the lowest rates were reported in engineering (14%) and in physical sciences
and earth sciences (20%).
● Since 2006, the rate of academic employment commitments by doctorate recipients in S&E
fields has declined by 7 percentage points, whereas the academic employment rate of
doctorates in non-science and engineering fields has risen. (National Science Foundation,
National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Directorate for Social, Behavioral
and Economic Sciences, 2018)
Theme #4: Many graduate students enrolled in research programs do not feel supported in their
exploration or pursuit of careers outside of academia. Many faculty want to help, but expect
students to establish clear career goals.
● Only half of respondents to a survey of global graduate students believed that their
supervisor is open to a career outside academia, 41% felt encouraged to attend
career-promoting events, and 33% reported getting useful advice for careers beyond
academia. Most respondents obtained career advice through online resources. (Woolston,
2015)
● According to a study of career development needs of doctoral students and faculty in
Chemistry departments, faculty felt most prepared to offer advice about academic career
paths but most were open to assisting doctoral students in pursuing non-academic career
paths, if the students had clear career goals. However, most students did not have a
well-developed understanding of their career options, which creates a gap between
well-meaning faculty and students who need help with career planning. The researchers
concluded that these students lacked professional socialization. (Laursen, Thiry, &
Loshbaugh H., 2012).
● It is important to support exploration of alternatives to positions at research universities.
The number of new PhDs produced annually far exceeds the number of open tenure-track
positions at research universities, yet many doctoral students at research universities are
hesitant to consider other career options, such as teaching at community colleges or
independent schools or non-academic careers (Albert & Attis, 2010).
Theme #5: International graduate students have unique and varying characteristics and
motivations that impact their career development needs.
● Regardless of their country of origin, genders or fields of study, most international students
found that their academic department or lab was more supportive than their career center
in pursuit of their career goals, for a number of reasons.
● Many students come from countries that lack career counseling services and do not seek
these services as part of their graduate studies. Other barriers included lower
74
acculturation levels and language barriers, belief that the most services aren’t relevant,
only for undergraduates or U.S. students, or a perception that they didn’t need the services.
● Because of these barriers, International student career needs are often hidden (i.e. they
don’t know what to ask for) and they lack motivation to seek professional services.
● International students were actually found to have greater need for career counseling
services, help in understanding their “rights” related to career search and work
experiences than U.S. students.
● In many cases, international students’ outstanding academic performance, faculty support,
and/or reputation of their academic department would appear to guarantee good jobs, so
they perceived that they did not need career counseling support.
● If information made it clear that the center would help international students to find a good
job, study participants expressed strong interest in pursuing centralized career help.
● Researchers recommended that career centers take these actions to enhance their support
of international students:
○ Collaborate with international student services, graduate student services, and
academic departments to develop an advisory handbook for faculty, including
cultural differences, and ideas and resources to broaden international student skills
and experiences, to enhance departmental support.
○ Work to provide international students with greater access to internships, increase
outreach to companies who support international students’ work authorizations as
well as to companies operating in students’ home countries. Ensure good
representation of these companies at career fairs and on-campus interviews.
○ Collaborate with alumni services to increase international student access to
international alumni networks.
○ Provide a rich array of diverse content targeted to international student populations
and subpopulations, including online services, links to legislation affecting
international student employment and to job banks in home countries.
○ Track international student employment outcomes and make the results visible to
increase international student confidence in the center.
○ All career counselors should examine their views regarding working with diverse
clients, globalization, immigration, and foreign workers’ competition in the U.S. job
market and ensure all counselors receive training on cultural sensitivity and
understand the factors that influence international students’ career plans, both as
individuals and as a group. (Shen, Y. & Herr, E. L., 2004)
Theme #6: Access to mentoring and professional networks can provide significant gains in
graduate student career development.
● A study of mentoring interactions for Black STEM students noted that “meaningful
relationships with faculty led to exposure to important experiences that helped [Black
STEM students] prepare for careers in academia.” These mentoring interactions produced
the strongest outcomes and we noted that this may be applicable more broadly (Alston,
Guy, & Campbell, 2017).
75
● A best practice is to bring in graduate alumni (from both academic and non-academic
settings) as experts, mentors, potential employers and donors. Many institutions engage a
broader range of graduate alumni in a more proactive way, including those teaching
outside of universities or those who have pursued non-academic careers (Albert & Attis,
2010).
● Mentoring and networking programs help graduate students develop greater “agency” in
their own career development (Meara, Jaeger, Eliason, Grantham, Cowdery, Mitchall, &
Zhang, 2017).
Theme #7: Collaborative service delivery models between departmental and centralized offices
may offer the most effective career outcomes for graduate students and advisory committee
comprised of faculty, students, career services and ancillary offices is an effective best practice.
Academic departments play an important role in the career development of graduate students
studying in their programs.
● In one study of six universities with very high research activity, researchers found that
most schools designate at least one advisor to graduate students in each academic
department in addition to their academic advisor to advise students on key resources,
including career options and research and fellowship opportunities. However, students
can be reluctant to be open about their needs and goals to individuals closely linked to their
academic success (Geraci & Kircher, 2011).
● Support should be tailored to the needs of different disciplines. Students in different fields
tend to follow different career paths and face different challenges. (Albert & Attis, 2010).
● A lack of coordination between Career Services offices and academic department career
activities as well as a lack of centralized career center visibility were cited as an issue at
many campuses. Department-based career services may have greater expertise on
discipline-specific career paths than centralized career services has (Kim, 2005).
● Many campuses offer hybrid career services models with collaboration across multiple
offices, including Graduate Education office, Career Services, Teaching and Learning,
individual departments. Many departments have faculty or administrative departmental to
let them know about resources, including career, research and fellowship opportunities
(Albert & Attis, 2010).
● Student access to qualified career counselors, which are typically housed in centralized
career services, is important as research indicates that individual career counseling is the
most efficient intervention for career gains, particularly for students of color and other
special groups (Feller, 1992).
● Institutions should build tight relationships between the central career services office and
academic departments. While faculty mentors and the broader departmental staff remain
the primary advisors to PhD students, increasingly Career Services offices are
supplementing their efforts with information, training, and tools relating to common
aspects of the job search process (Albert & Attis, 2010).
● Forming a career advisory committee with faculty, students, and career services is
recommended to ensure greater collaboration (Kim, 2005).
76
References
Albert, J. & Attis, D. (2010). Career advising services for doctoral students, Custom Research Brief
August 9, 2010, Research Associates.
Alston, G, Guy, S. & Campbell, C. (2017). Ready for the professoriate? The influence of mentoring
on career development for black male graduate students in STEM. Journal of African American
Males in Education, 8 (1), 45-66.
Feller, R. (1992). Career counseling is the answer, so why keep asking questions? A baseline of career
counseling outcomes research (ED345190). Colorado State University: Author. Retrieved from:
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED345190.pdf
Geraci, L. & Kircher, A. (2011). Graduate student advising structures at selective

research universities (Custom Research Brief). Washington, DC: Education Advisory Board.
Clobes, A., Gruder, K., Hutto, T., Kelly, C., Petrie, K., & Pszczolkowski, A. (2016, June). First annual
GCC state of the profession survey. Paper presented at the 2016 meeting of the Graduate Career
Consortium. University of California, Berkeley.
Hardré, P. & Hackett, S. (2015). Understanding the graduate college experience: perceptual
differences by degree type, point-in-program and disciplinary subgroups. Learning Environments
Research, 18 (30), 453-468. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10984-015-9194-1
Kim, E. (2005). Career services for graduate students: a case study. Retrieved from ERIC database.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (ED492255)
Laursen, S., Thiry, H. & Loshbaugh H. (2012, April). Mind the Gap: The Mismatch between Career
Decision-Making Needs and Opportunities for Science Ph.D. Students. Paper presented at the 2012
American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada. Retrieved from:
https://www.colorado.edu/eer/sites/default/files/attached-files/aerapaperchemphd_mar12final.pd
f
Lehker, T. & Furlong, J. (2006). Career services for graduate and professional students In
Supporting Graduate and Professional Students: The Role of Student Affairs (pp.
73-84). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2017). 2017 Career Exploration Survey. Unpublished raw
data.
77
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2018). 2018 Doctoral Exit Survey. Retrieved from
http://ir.mit.edu/surveys
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2015). 2015 Enrolled Graduate Student Survey. Retrieved
from http://ir.mit.edu/surveys
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2018). 2017 Fall Career Fair Survey. Unpublished raw
data.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2018). 2018 Graduating Student Survey. Retrieved from
http://ir.mit.edu/surveys
National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics Directorate
for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. (2018). 2016 Doctorate Recipients from U.S.
Universities. Retrieved from
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsf18304/static/report/nsf18304-report.pdf
O’Meara, K., Jaeger, A., Eliason, J., Grantham, A., Cowdery, K., Mitchall, A, & Zhang, K. (2017). By
Design: How departments influence graduate student agency in career advancement. International
Journal of Doctoral Studies, 9, 155-179. Retrieved from:
http://ijds.org/Volume9/IJDSv9p155-179OMeara0518.pdf
Shen, Y. & Herr, E. L. (2004). Career placement concerns of international graduate students: a
qualitative study. Journal of Career Development, 31 (1), pp. 15-29.
Stumpf, S., Calarelli, S. & Hartman, K. (1983). Development of the career exploration survey.
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 192-225.
Woolston, C. (2015, 22 October). Uncertain futures, Nature Magazine, 526, 597-600. Retrieved
from: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7574/full/nj7574-597a.html
World Economic Forum (2016). “Ten jobs that didn’t exist ten years ago.” Available at
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/10-jobs-that-didn-t-exist-10-years-ago/.
78
Appendix E: Analysis of Gendered Differences
We have analyzed gendered differences in student perception of the opportunities they have had
for career exploration. Specifically, we consider the responses from the 2017 Career Exploration
Survey to the question: “To what extent do you agree with the following statement: I have been able
to explore career-related opportunities of interest to me at MIT”. The responses for all departments
and programs which had at least 5 female and 5 male respondents are shown in the tables below.
When a statistically significant difference was observed at a p<0.05, the percentages are
highlighted in red or blue font and the corresponding p values are given.
Undergraduate Departments
Strongly Somewhat Neither Agree Somewhat +
Dept. Gender p values
Disagree Disagree nor Disagree Strongly Agree
Female 9% 9% 0% 82%
1
Male 0% 0% 20% 80%
Female 5% 14% 8% 73%
2
Male 4% 7% 7% 82%
Female 0% 0% 11% 89%
3
Male 0% 17% 0% 83%
Female 0% 29% 14% 57%
5
Male 0% 25% 0% 75%
Female 2% 6% 5% 87%
6
Male 0% 2% 8% 90%
Female 15% 19% 12% 54%
8
Male 0% 14% 20% 66%
Female 2% 2% 4% 91%
10
Male 8% 0% 8% 83%
Female 0% 10% 0% 90%
15
Male 0% 0% 0% 100%
Female 7% 7% 0% 86%
16
Male 4% 0% 7% 89%
Female 4% 12% 24% 60% p = 0.019
18
Male 0% 12% 5% 83% p = 0.034
Female 0% 12% 6% 82%
20
Male 0% 11% 0% 89%
79
Masters Programs

Program Gender p values
Female 0% 0% 33% 67%

1
Male 6% 13% 13% 69%
Female 12% 12% 8% 69%

2
Male 3% 0% 14% 84%
Female 0% 0% 20% 80%

3
Male 0% 8% 8% 85%
Female 0% 33% 33% 33%

4 p = 0.046
Male 17% 0% 0% 83%
Female 4% 12% 4% 81%

6
Male 0% 3% 3% 94%
Female 0% 20% 20% 60%

11 p = 0.020
Male 0% 0% 6% 94%
Female 3% 5% 13% 78%

15
Male 6% 6% 9% 80%
Female 0% 0% 33% 67%

16
Male 5% 5% 0% 90%
Female 0% 0% 0% 100%
MAS
Male 0% 0% 0% 100%
Female 0% 20% 0% 80%

RED
Male 0% 20% 20% 60%
Female 0% 0% 11% 89%

SCM
Male 0% 0% 0% 100%
Female 25% 8% 8% 58%

SDM p = 0.031
Male 3% 17% 10% 70%
Female 0% 17% 17% 67%

TPP
Male 0% 7% 7% 87%
80
Doctoral Programs
Dept. Gender p values
Female 13% 38% 13% 38%
1 p = 0.020
Male 0% 9% 9% 82%
Female 0% 11% 11% 79%
2
Male 6% 9% 15% 70%
Female 14% 29% 29% 29%
3 p = 0.001
Male 7% 0% 0% 93%
Female 0% 10% 20% 70%
5
Male 3% 16% 9% 72%
Female 7% 7% 0% 86%
6
Male 3% 8% 15% 74%
Female 11% 11% 14% 64%
7
Male 0% 9% 13% 78%
Female 0% 25% 13% 63%
8
Male 3% 13% 27% 57%
Female 0% 14% 29% 57%
9
Male 0% 20% 10% 70%
Female 0% 11% 6% 83%
10
Male 0% 7% 10% 83%
Female 5% 15% 20% 60%
12
Male 22% 11% 11% 56%
Female 13% 38% 25% 25%
14 p = 0.012
Male 6% 11% 17% 67%
Female 0% 13% 0% 88%
18
Male 6% 11% 17% 67%
Female 0% 0% 8% 92%
20
Male 0% 6% 6% 88%
Female 0% 57% 14% 29%
24
Male 17% 0% 33% 50%
Female 0% 7% 14% 79%
HST
Male 0% 6% 19% 75%
81
Appendix F: Measurable Outcomes for Career Exploration and Career
Services at MIT
An example set of measurable outcomes were developed based upon the objectives for career
exploration and career careers at MIT (described in 1. A Vision for Career Exploration at MIT).
However, we believe that the proposed Committee on Student Career Exploration and Development
should develop measurable outcomes that they would then track. Furthermore, we found the
development of these measurable outcomes to be quite difficult and imagine that they would evolve
and improve over time as that proposed committee uses them.
We organize the example measurable outcomes under the objectives they are most closely aligned
with. However, some of the outcomes in fact likely measure achievement of more than one of the
objectives.
Objective #1: Foster in all students the career development skills to support a lifelong ability to work
● Outcome 1.1: Increase collaborations between CAPD and academic departments to offer career
development skills opportunities.
● Outcome 1.2: Increase by 10% the usage of alumni for career exploration as measured by the
2022 Career Exploration Survey.
Objective #2: Enable effective career exploration for all students.

● Outcome 2.1: Accomplish a 10% improvement in responses in 2022 for the undergraduate,
masters and doctoral students whose majors were least satisfied in the 2017 Career Explorations
Survey for the question “How satisfied are you with the career exploration offerings of the following
types in your field(s) of interest?” Specific majors include:
○ Undergraduate: 8, 7, 12
○ Masters: 1, 4
○ Doctoral: 8, 14, 24, 15
● Outcome 2.2: Allocation of all revenue, minus costs, generated by career fairs to support
students seeking short career exploration opportunities such as internships or
micro-internships, to help remove financial barriers and increase greater access to career
exploration in a wide array of industries.
● Outcome 2.3: Increase the number of academic programs at MIT that have adopted a career
exploration and professional development requirement for graduate students.
● Outcome 2.4: Increase events that support career exploration for first year students early on
in their experience at MIT.
● Outcome 2.5: Increase the access and use of MIT's central career management system
(presently Handshake) by academic departments, programs, and students.
● Outcome 2.6: Implementation of a holistic career fair strategy adopted by MIT that includes
standards, clarity of purpose, and objectives to serve all students and a wide range of career
interests.
82
● Outcome 2.7: Increase career exploration opportunities that are focused on helping
undergraduates consider graduate school options.
Objective #3: Advocate on behalf of all students for equity in career exploration and career opportunities
through engagement with external stakeholders such as employers, professional schools, graduate
programs, fellowships and more.
● Outcome 3.1: Create a pay equity webpage by 2021 for MIT that educates, supports and
enables students to more effectively negotiate for equitable compensation.
● Outcome 3.2: Establish a working group with external stakeholders to tackle recruitment
timelines
Objective #4: Employ a continuous improvement process that includes assessment of measurable
outcomes for career exploration and career services that reflect our principles and objectives
● Outcome 4.1: Conduct a Career Exploration Survey every 5 years to identify new target majors
and student cohorts that are underserved.
● Outcome 4.2: Develop a tool to assess the effectiveness of micro opportunities for career
exploration for use across MIT academic departments, offices and programs.
● Outcome 4.3: Establish a Committee on Student Career Exploration and Development that is
supported by the Office of the Vice Chancellor and the Academic Deans.
● Outcome 4.4: Develop a process to assess the effectiveness of collaborations between CAPD,
academic departments, and student organizations in supporting student career exploration
needs.
● Outcome 4.5: Report annually by the Committee on Student Career Exploration and
Development that catalogues career exploration events and opportunities, including breadth of
opportunities offered and impact.
● Outcome 4.6: Develop an approach to assess the career development skills students acquire in
their time at MIT.
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Appendix G: 2017 Career Exploration Survey Analysis
The figure below shows (for each information source asked about), the percentage of respondents
that utilized a particular information source, and among those utilizers the percentage that found
it Very or Somewhat useful. Observations from this figure are:
● Peers were the most utilized as well as most useful information source. The high utilization
(98%) is not surprising given the large number of peers students can interact with,
compared to the other information sources. And, the high usefulness (96%) clearly
indicates that students find peer information reliable.
● The second most utilized information source is the Fall Career Fair (92%), however, the
usefulness is much lower (77%).
● The second most useful information source are internships (95%), though the utilization is
somewhat lower at 83%.
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Figure UG-Usefulness_v_utilization: Response of undergraduates excluding first-years to “How useful do you
find the following sources of information about career opportunities?”. Utilization is the percentage of
respondents that utilized that source (utilizers). Usefulness is percentage of utilizers that found the source
either Very or Somewhat useful. 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
Table UG-Correlation: Correlation coefficients (R) among career information sources (measured by the
percentage of students in a department that found the source useful), percentage of students that have
strongly or somewhat agreed that they have been able to explore career opportunities, and percentage of
students interested in pursuing another degree immediately after graduating. Also shown are the p-level of
the null hypothesis that items are not correlated. Green/red shaded entries indicate that positive/negative
correlation likely exists (at 95% confidence).
As noted, the differences in ability to explore careers were less varied by year and ethnicity:
● First-years and sophomores have approximately 10% lower percentage of Strongly Agree
responses than juniors and seniors (Figure 2-3), though the combined Agree responses are
statistically the same.
85
● Differences do exist among ethnicity (Figure 2-5) with Asian, Black/African-American, and
Hispanic/Latino with 5-10% higher Agree response rates than Two or more races and
White. However, the only statistically significant difference is between Asian and White.
Figure 2-3: Undergraduate agreement by year with ability “to explore career-related opportunities of interest
to me at MIT.” 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
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Figure 2-5: Undergraduate agreement by ethnicity with ability “to explore career-related opportunities of
interest to me at MIT.” 2017 MIT Career Exploration Survey (January 2017).
87
Appendix H: Ivy + Alumni/ae Engagement
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Appendix I: Employer Engagement Survey
To help better understand employer engagement on campus, we conducted a survey during the
beginning of 2019. The following are some highlights of that survey.
● Overall: There were responses from 160 companies with 152 unique companies
represented.
● Size: The responses were fairly well distributed by size of company, with 21% of
respondents with >10,000 employees, 20% had 11-50 employees, 13% each with 51-200
and 1001-5000 employees, except that only 6% of companies with 5001-10,000
employees.
Industry Distribution:
● Top industries represented include computer software (28%), engineering (21%), financial
services (13%), computer hardware/electrical engineering (13%), consulting (12%), and
pharmaceutics (12%). Organizations could select as many industries as applied.
● Other industries (selected by 14% of respondents) identified as telecommunications,
contract research/manufacturing, proprietary trading, travel, IT services, R&D, mining, oil
and gas, engineering for architecture, machine learning/AI, tech, robotics, internet,
engineering and scientific consulting.
Targeted Populations:
● More respondents targeted undergraduates (75%) and master’s (81%) students than
doctoral students (45%). Employers could target more than one population.
● Master’s students were highest in demand for the smallest and largest sized companies
(≤200 and >5000) and they were tied with undergraduates for those with 501-1000
employees. Undergraduates were the most in demand for employers with 201-500 and
1001-5000 employees.
● Undergraduates, master’s, and doctoral students were almost targeted by the same two
industries: computer software and engineering. The computer hardware/electrical
engineering industry was identified as the third highest industry in targeting
undergraduates and master’s students, whereas pharmaceutics was the third highest for
doctoral students.
Objectives for Engagement with MIT:

● Overall, responding employers rated these objectives for engaging with the MIT community
the highest (percentage rating the item as “somewhat” to “very important”): recruiting for
full-time positions (93%), increasing brand recognition (78%), fostering relationships with
student groups (76%), recruiting for internships (76%), fostering relationships with MIT
career services (CAPD) (72%), and serving student needs for career exploration (72%).
Among the lowest objectives overall was on-campus interviewing (45%) and increasing
89
awareness of MIT research and innovation (42%). The order of ratings did not vary
significantly by target population.
● The ratings of objectives did vary in some areas based upon employer size, but all size
categories, except for those with 501-1000 employees, ranked full-time recruiting as their
top objective. Increasing awareness of MIT research and innovation, on-campus
interviewing, and seeking expertise to solve specific problems were consistently among the
lowest ranked objectives.
● There was also a great deal of variability in responses by industry, with some highlights
provided below (note that some industries had small representation). This information
could be useful for CAPD, as well as to better understand the needs of employers from
underrepresented industries.
○ For academia, relationships with faculty and MIT departments were very important,
as would be expected.
○ In applied research, seeking expertise to solve specific problems and serving
students for career exploration were both noted as the second most important
objectives, in a three-way tie with increasing brand recognition.
○ For automotive and transportation, fostering relationships with CAPD and serving
student needs for career exploration were tied with internship recruiting for their
second most important objectives.
○ For basic research, fostering relationships with faculty was among the top three
objectives for MIT engagement.
○ All respondents representing chemicals and materials rated serving student needs
for career exploration as “somewhat” or “very important,” tied with increasing
brand recognition as their most important objective.
○ For consulting, serving student needs for career exploration was identified as their
third most important objective, tied with fostering relationships with student
groups.
○ For energy and utilities, serving student needs for career exploration was identified
as their third most important objective, tied with increasing brand recognition.
○ For the government, fostering relationships with faculty was identified as the third
most important objective.
○ For health/medicine, fostering relationships with departments/labs was identified
as the second most important objective.
○ Within investment banking, full time recruiting was rated below five other
objectives in importance; however, recruiting interns was their top rated objective.
○ For non-profit agencies, recruiting for internships is rated most important and
relationships with CAPD and increasing awareness of MIT research and innovation
are tied for second most important objective.
○ Pharmaceutics indicated that fostering relationships with faculty and departments
were tied for the second most important objective along with increasing brand
recognition.
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Participation with the MIT community:
● Employers were asked about their organization’s participation with the MIT community
and also able to indicate awareness and interest.
● Over half of the respondents indicate that they were aware of and participated in job
boards, internship programs, and the MIT Fall Career Fair. Forty percent or more of
respondents indicate that they were aware, but do not participate in other MIT career fairs,
hackathons, employer mock interviews/resume critiques and the MIT Fall Career Fair.
● More than 30% of employer respondents indicated that they were unaware of, but would
like to participate in panel events, company site visits, virtual career fairs, webinars,
mentorship programs, and job shadowing. Over 30% of respondents indicated that
although they were unaware of these programs, they would not participate in on-campus
office hours, sponsorships, and job shadowing.
● The most popular participation opportunities (either participate in or would like to) were
job boards, internship programs, company site visits, panel events, the MIT Fall Career Fair,
networking events, and company presentations.
● The least popular participation opportunities (either don’t participate in or would not like
to) include hackathons, job shadowing, mock interviews/resume critiques, on-campus
office hours, externship programs, and webinars.
● There was variability in participation based upon employer size. Smaller employers (≤200
employees) reported low participation rates in recruiting activities with no activity
registering above 50%. The highest average rate of participation was with job boards and
they were most likely to participate in panel events and company site visits, if they were
aware of them. Their lowest participation rates were in sponsorships and webinars and
they were less likely to participate in sponsorships or job shadowing, even if they were
aware of these.
● Medium sized employers (201-1000 employees) report the highest average rates of
participation for internship programs and job boards and they report that they were
unaware of, but most likely to participate in, company site visits and panel events. Their
lowest participation rates were in job shadowing programs and virtual career fairs and
they were least likely to participate in externship programs or mentoring, even if they were
aware of these.
● Larger employers (1001-10,000+ employees) report the highest average rates of
participation for job boards and internship programs and they reported that they were
unaware of, but most likely to participate in panel events and mentoring programs. Their
lowest participation rates were in other career fairs and hackathons and they were least
likely to participate in job shadowing or employer on-campus office hours, even if they
were aware of these.
Offer Timelines
● Employers were asked when they would prefer to make offers of full-time and internship
employment.
● In both full-time and internship offers, the most preferred timing was “as needed” with
64% favoring this timing for full-time positions and 42% favoring it for internships.
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● For full-time positions the next preferred months were October (38%), November (28%),
and September (27%).
● For internship offers, the next preferred months were October (34%), November (29%),
December (24%) and January (23%).
● There were some differences noted between target populations and the overall timeline
preferences.
○ For those targeting undergraduates, October was the most preferred offer month for
internship offers, followed by a tie for November and “as needed.” For
undergraduate full-time offers, “as needed” still dominated, but there were stronger
preferences to make offers in October, and a tie for September and November than
in the overall results.
○ For those targeting master’s students, preferences were similar to the overall
preferences noted above.
○ For those targeting doctoral student interns, “as needed” was preferred slightly
more than October and November and January were tied for third most preferred.
For doctoral full-time recruiting the top preferences were the same as the overall
results.
● There were also differences based upon employer size. Small (≤200 employees) employers
strongly preferred “as needed” for both internship and full-time offers against any month,
especially for full-time offers (77%). Medium (201-1000 employees) employers slightly
preferred November (47%) over “as needed” (44%) for internship offers and strongly
preferred “as needed” (74%) for full-time offers. Large (>1001) employers preferred
November, October, and September, in that order, for internship offers and October,
September, and “as needed” for full-time offers.
Participation in MIT Career Fairs

● Overall, respondents indicated that they would prefer to participate in on-campus MIT
career fairs in September (49%), October (31%), and February (23%). The months that
were least preferred included June (2%), July (4%), and May (5%). Other items to note
were that all months generated some level interest, 30% of respondents indicated that this
question was not applicable to them, and respondents could select multiple responses.
● There were some differences between career fair preferences based upon target
populations. For employers targeting undergraduates, their preferences were very
similar to the overall preferences, with a strong preference September (56%). For those
targeted Master’s students, their preferences were also similar to the overall preferences,
except that those indicating that this item was not applicable to them (32%) was ranked
second. The preferences for those targeting doctoral students was also similar overall,
with a very strong preference for September (61%), except that November was the third
most selected preference.
● There were also differences in preferences by company size. Small (≤200 employees)
employers were more than more likely than other groups to say that this question was not
applicable to their practice (48%) and 27% preferred September. Two-thirds of medium
employers indicated September was their preferred month and 60% preferred October
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(employers could select more than one preference). Just over 60% of large employers
preferred September and 34% preferred October.
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Final Report of the

Career Exploration and Services Committee

● It is central to the Institute’s mission

● Enable effective career exploration for all students.

● Employ a continuous improvement process that includes assessment of measurable

● Under-served career trajectories​. Undergraduate student satisfaction with career

● Importance of internships for graduate exploration​. Approximately 70% of graduate

● Create a Committee on Student Career Exploration and Development. ​We strongly

​ etter support is needed for undergraduates who

1. A Vision for Career Exploration at MIT

4. Career Exploration Events

5. Career Exploration Hub

6. Graduate Student Internships

Appendix A: Committee Charge and Membership

Appendix B: Catalog of Career Exploration Committee Recommendations

Appendix C: ​Undergraduate Career Exploration and Service Needs

Appendix E: Analysis of Gendered Differences

Appendix G: 2017 Career Exploration Survey Analysis

Appendix H: Ivy + Alumni/ae Engagement

Appendix I: Employer Engagement Survey

● Career: ​The lifelong use of your skills, knowledge, and experiences.

● Job: ​One person in one position doing a set of tasks.

● Occupation: ​A definable work activity or field found in many locations.

● Profession:​ An occupation requiring significant training.

● Professional development: ​The process of attaining and strengthening skills needed to

2. Shared and collaborative responsibility. ​Career exploration and career services is a

2. Enable effective career exploration for all students.

4. Employ a continuous improvement process that includes assessment of measurable

● Satisfaction​: To determine the level of satisfaction of users of existing career exploration

Structure of Career Services at MIT

2. Enable effective career exploration for all students.

Figure UG-Sources-Useful: Departmental mean percentage of undergraduate respondents that found an

● The three statistically significant drivers of departmental variability in career exploration

Figure UG-Sources-AllvsDegree: Comparison of information sources used by all upperclass undergraduate

Female 3% 12% 8% 77%

Female 4% 9% 14% 73%

All masters Male 4% 6% 8% 82%

Female 7% 13% 13% 67%

All doctoral Male 4% 9% 16% 71%

4. Employ a continuous improvement process that includes assessment of measurable

Participation and Engagement Tracking

● Conduct targeted outreach to academic department and student organization

Peer institution comparison

Shortcomings of Current MIT Fairs

● Create opportunities to learn about a range of careers

Examples of Career Exploration Opportunities

Internships & Fellowships

Site-Visits & Excursions

Externships & Job Shadows

Classes and Seminars

One function of a Career Exploration Conference would be for conversation, information

3. Resetting the Career Exploration Timeline: ​Independent of the development of a Career

The committee’s challenges in cataloging career exploration opportunities at MIT made it

Goals for Centralization Resources

Our specific recommendations with respect to a career exploration hub are:

6. Organize a central database, maintained by CAPD, to house recruiter or employer

Students are interested in a wide range of different career paths

Student participation rate in internships

(a) Responses by School

● Under-served career trajectories. Undergraduate student satisfaction with career

● Importance of internships for graduate exploration. Approximately 70% of graduate

● Create a Committee on Student Career Exploration and Development. We strongly

etter support is needed for undergraduates who

Appendix C: Undergraduate Career Exploration and Service Needs

● Career: The lifelong use of your skills, knowledge, and experiences.

● Job: One person in one position doing a set of tasks.

● Occupation: A definable work activity or field found in many locations.

● Profession: An occupation requiring significant training.

● Professional development: The process of attaining and strengthening skills needed to

2. Shared and collaborative responsibility. Career exploration and career services is a

● Satisfaction: To determine the level of satisfaction of users of existing career exploration

3. Resetting the Career Exploration Timeline: Independent of the development of a Career

Recommendation 1: Create a Committee on Student Career Exploration and Development

Recommendation 4: Expand Career Exploration Opportunities

Geraci, L. & Kircher, A. (2011). Graduate student advising structures at selective

Objective #2: Enable effective career exploration for all students.