Three-month placement

Graduation date is the earliest date the university says the student may use the degree, often conferral, not the ceremony. Three months after that date is the Employment Reporting Date. Offers and acceptances through midnight that day count if the graduate notifies the school by the collection cutoff (four months post-graduation).

Status at three months overrides every earlier label. Someone who planned to postpone at commencement and then applied in week ten is seeking at both published points. Someone who accepted in August, lost the job, and accepted again in September uses the later acceptance for salary and source tables; the first offer’s timing stays on Table 2.A.

Schools with May, August, and December conferrals still publish one combined at-graduation percentage and one combined three-month percentage. Edition VII’s sample: ten seekers across three dates produce 30% accepted by graduation, 50% after graduation and by three months, 20% still open — reported as one class, not three mini-classes.

Clock	In the Standards tables?
At graduation	Yes (Tables 2.A and 2.B)
Three months after graduation	Yes — the headline placement mark
Four months (collection cutoff)	Confirming, not a new rate
Six months	Optional narrative; keep out of required tables

The 2025 revisions say a school may keep calling graduates at six months. Those outcomes stay in a labeled extra exhibit. Printing a 96% “as of December” as if it were the three-month Standard is the usual homepage trick.

NACE undergraduate reports use a six-month clock. Do not splice an MBA three-month 88% with an undergrad six-month 92% and call one school “better at jobs.”

CSEA set two public marks so schools have equal post-graduation time. Graduation is what applicants expect to see. Three months is long enough for late searches and short enough that reports still describe one labor-market season. Six months is allowed as extra knowledge, not as a replacement table.

Yes, as a dated interim report. Final Standards tables still use the three-month Employment Reporting Date. Closing early does not let the school skip the required outreach schedule.

No for Table 2.A. Midnight on the three-month date is the line. The office has another month to learn about offers that already existed. A new offer created after the reporting date belongs in a footnote or a later, labeled update.

One CSEA reporting year (1 July–30 June, or a footnoted one-month shift). Every conferral in that year is one class. Each student gets a personal graduation date for the three-month math, then the school stacks the percentages.