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What are UCL's Class of 2021-22 up to?

Find out about the career destinations of our 2021-22 graduates through the assessment of the latest Graduate Outcomes survey results by Katy Coyte, UCL Careers' Data Analyst.

Three University College London graduates sitting on the Portico building, wearing graduation gowns.

27 August 2024

The latest results of the UK’s largest ongoing social survey are here. Of the 19,517 people who graduated with a UCL degree in 2021-22, 7,063 responded to the Graduate Outcomes survey (36.2%). Graduate Outcomes looks at where graduates are in their careers 15 months after leaving; and as ever, UCL graduates are up to a stellar range of activities all over the globe.  

Where do graduates work and what do they do? 

2021-22 graduates were working in 90 different countries, the top five being the UK, China, the US, Germany and France. 62.3% of those who were employed were working in London. 

The most common destinations are work or study, at 90.9%. We found that 90.6% of those graduates who were available for work or study (i.e. they weren’t retired, caring for family or taking time out to travel) had what we call a ‘positive destination’. So, they were either in a graduate-level job (professional, technical or managerial-type employment), postgraduate study, or had just graduated from a course of postgraduate study. 

For such a multifarious organisation, graduates naturally went into a huge range of occupations. With the Institute of Education and UCL Medical School such prominent parts of UCL, it’s unsurprising that Secondary School Teachers and Generalist Medical Practitioners were the most common and fourth most common occupations respectively.  The second most common occupations were Management Consultants and Business Analysts. In at number three (and rising through the ranks for several years) were Programmers and Software Development Professionals. Fifth were Finance and Investment Analysts. Ranking in the top ten for the first time were Therapy Professionals. For doctoral graduates, the most common occupations were: Researchers; Higher Education Teaching Professionals; Medical Specialists; Psychologists; and Natural and Social Science Professionals.  

Who employs them? 

The top employers were UCL, NHS organisations, Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG followed by the UK Government, Amazon and Accenture. Doctoral graduates went on to work at prestigious organisations such as King’s College, London, Imperial College, Oxford and Cambridge universities (and UCL, of course!), as well as NHS organisations and into research and development roles with the likes of Johnson Matthey, IQVIA, Bayer and Google.  

A significant minority of working graduates (6.4%) were self-employed, running their own business or developing a creative or professional portfolio. Median salary earnings were: £34,000 (£43,545 for doctoral graduates). 

Study and research 

41.5% of graduates of undergraduate programmes had undertaken further study since graduating including research degrees at many institutions worldwide, including UCL, Imperial College, LSE, Cambridge, Oxford and Kings’ College. Significant numbers of graduates also completed professional qualifications with BPP, Kaplan and The University of Law. Online learning through sites such as Coursera and Udemy were also popular. 

Find about more about what UCL graduates do 

If you are curious to see what your UCL graduate peers went on to do post-study, have a look at the interactive dashboard where you can view five years of the destinations data by course.  

UCL Careers is here for you 

And if you are a student or graduate, please make use of UCL Careers for support in making applications, preparing for interviews or planning a change of direction. Graduates can use the service for up to three years following graduation. See our recent graduates webpage to find out what is available to you. 

Respond to the survey when the time comes 

Finally, please respond to the Graduate Outcomes survey when the time comes, a year after you graduate. We value each and every response, particularly from our international graduates, who are currently under-represented. Knowing our graduates next steps is so valuable, to course leaders, careers professionals, to current students and those thinking of studying at UCL. 

*All graduates who completed an award between 1st August 2021 and 31st July 2022.