First destination

First destination is the job (or other status) an MBA graduate has at graduation or within the school’s reporting window, often three months. CSEA employment reports are first-destination documents. They are not a career.

The useful question is “what do people do next?” not “what will they be at 50?”

How it is measured

Career offices classify each graduate as seeking employment, not seeking, or no information. Among seekers, they record offers and acceptances by industry, function, and region, plus base salary when reported. Stanford’s 2024 report is typical in structure: a class split, then compensation only for the people who sought and accepted jobs and reported pay.

Three months is the usual public checkpoint. A job accepted in month four can miss the table. A job left in month seven still counts as the first destination.

Example: 300 seekers, 270 accepted by three months, 30 still looking. The first-destination placement story is 270/300, not 270/400, if 100 classmates were never seeking. Quote the denominator.

How it differs

The Financial Times asks what alumni earn three years later. That is a different destination. An internal promotion during a part-time MBA may not count as a first destination in the full-time sense. CSEA part-time standards use their own change definitions.

Common errors

Treating first destination as ROI. Mixing seekers and non-seekers in one percentage. Comparing a school’s three-month number with FT’s three-year salary.

Industry tables hide function. A graduate in ‘technology’ can be a PM, a finance hire inside a tech firm, or a consultant on a tech account. Read function and industry together. Geography tables hide visa reality: a US first destination is not available to every classmate who wanted it. The three-month window also misses people who start in January after a delayed clearance.