As the Class of 2024 prepares to graduate this month, Trinity College’s Career and Life Design Center is celebrating the post-Trinity successes of last year’s graduates.
A “first destinations” survey of the members of Trinity’s Class of 2023 found a 96.3 percent total placement rate, which reflects alumni who are employed full-time or part-time, continuing their education, serving in the military, or volunteering.
Nearly 75 percent of the respondents reported full-time employment. More than 18 percent are continuing their education at the graduate level. Five students reported being engaged in volunteer service—such as AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps—and two students are serving in the military. The survey reflects data as of December 31, 2023, and includes responses from 461 of Trinity’s newest alumni, comprising 91.1 percent of the class.
The total placement rate for the 2023 graduates is nearly identical to the “first destinations” responses from the two previous years, which stood at 96.1 percent for the Class of 2022 and 97 percent for the Class of 2021.
Joseph M. Catrino, the executive director of career and life design, said that the strength and stability of these numbers shows that Trinity graduates consistently find jobs and other fulfilling opportunities, no matter the job market or economic climate.
“The data speaks for itself,” Catrino said. “Our students are landing really good jobs, prestigious fellowships, and volunteer opportunities. Each year we have graduates going into law school, medical school, business programs, art school, communications programs, and education programs.”
Catrino said that the liberal arts skills that students build at Trinity prepare them well for the future of work, whatever that will look like. In recent years, with emerging technologies and labor force shifts brought about by the pandemic, the workforce has experienced disruption, resulting in some jobs disappearing and new ones emerging, he said.
“For today’s college students, their first or second job may not even exist yet,” Catrino said. “Employers want to hire people who know how to think, and I believe that Trinity students know how to think because of our curriculum. What our students are doing post-Trinity is a testament to that.”
Matthew S. Hyde, dean of admissions and financial aid, recently noted that Trinity fosters in students a willpower to do more with what they learn.
“Trinity students amass a blend of intelligences that make them sharp leaders and prolific producers,” he wrote in his Bicentennial Essay highlighting what makes Trinity distinct. “Our increasingly diverse, globally engaged and professionally successful alumni body is an absolute point of institutional pride.”
According to the Career and Life Design survey, Class of 2023 graduates pursuing careers in medicine are working at these top academic medical centers: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Beth Israel Lahey Health, Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Hartford HealthCare, Massachusetts General Hospital, Tufts Medical Center, and Weill Cornell Medicine.
Trinity engineers from the Class of 2023 are working at Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Pratt & Whitney, a Raytheon Technologies Company (RTX), Raytheon Missiles and Defense, Cognex Corp, Deutsche Bank, AT&T, and Google.
In a year that saw a downturn in consulting businesses, Trinity students still found their way to some of the top firms, including McKinsey & Company, Deloitte, PwC, and Accenture.
Trinity graduates entering the non-profit world are working for Partners in Health, Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Hartford Public Library, International Rescue Committee, Italian Home for Children, Our Piece of the Pie, Inc., Teach for America, The Naloxone Project & Stader Opioid Consultants, The University Network for Human Rights, and Women’s Business Development Council.
And 40 percent of the Class of 2023 continues the long Trinity tradition of working in finance at top institutions, including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank, UBS, Fidelity Investments, The Carlyle Group, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Rothschild & Co, S&P Global, and London Stock Exchange Group.
Helping Trinity students to determine what they will do after graduation is just one aspect of the Career and Life Design Center, which also offers career coaching to alumni. “Our mission is to support students with their transitions into, through, and beyond Trinity,” Catrino said. “The pillars of what we’ve built here are early engagement, experiential learning, and life after Trinity. I’m really proud of the work we do in Career and Life Design, but none of this happens without the value of the Trinity alumni network.”
As a highly-utilized campus resource, the Career and Life Design Center hosted 2,700 one-on-one career coaching appointments last year. This year, Catrino said, the Center is on track to reach 3,000. “We work with students on their internship search, their interview skills, their job search, their networking, and how to tell their story and develop their personal brand,” he said.
To learn more about Trinity’s Career and Life Design Center, click here.
