Students wondering where their friends who graduated have gone can rest assured that they are probably still in the state of Illinois, in the Chicago area or near suburbs.

The Career Planning and Placement Center annually conducts a mail survey of the past academic year’s graduates to learn where they have gone and what they are doing.

“We mail the survey in June, July or August and we wait for the responses to come in. We have a follow-up survey sent to non-respondents in September. The cut-off for returning the survey is around the end of October,” Vickie Oliver, a placement counselor, said. Oliver helped prepare the reports.

“All students are sent survey forms and it is strictly voluntary,” she said.

The results of the survey are tabulated by computer around the end of October of the following academic year and published in the Graduate Follow-up Report, Oliver said.

The report findings are based on the graduates’ major and degree, Oliver said.

Joan Greening, an employee at the Career Planning and Placement Center, said the follow-up report was started in 1978.

The report showed that the 1987-88 year was good for graduates. Seventy-four percent of all graduates at the baccalaureate level who responded reported full-time employment. While 80 percent of those respondents who graduated with a master’s degree reported full-time employment and 100 percent of those who responded and had graduated with Certificates of Advanced Study and Education Specialist reported full-time employment.

The 1988-89 follow-up report displayed similar results for those graduates. The report stated “at the baccalaureate level, 71 percent of all survey respondents reported full-time employment. Eighty percent of master’s degree respondents, 96 percent of certificate of specialist respondents and 90 percent of doctoral degree respondents reported full-time employment.”

Oliver said that this information is forthcoming, the 1988-89 report has not yet been printed but will be published soon.

Both the 1987-88 and the 1988-89 reports stated that graduates “exhibited a relaxed attitude toward obtaining employment upon graduation; they requested fewer interviews and were selective as to which employers they considered for jobs”.

The reports also said that Illinois, particularly the Chicago metropolitan area, was the place most graduates chose to work. Of the baccalaureate graduates for the 1987-88 academic year, 93 percent chose to live in that area. The number dropped by only 1 percent, to 92 percent for the 1988-89 academic year.

Ninety-three percent of the master’s degree respondents for the 1987-88 year reported living in that area, while for the 1988-89 academic year, 89 percent reported living in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Advanced Study Certificate and Educational Specialist graduates for 1987-88 and 1988-89 reported that 100 percent were living or working in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Doctoral degree graduates reported 58 percent and 72 percent for the 1987-88 and 1988-89 academic years, respectively, living in the area.

Greening said graduates go to the city or suburbs depending on the business they go into.

For the 1987-88 academic year, a total of about 4,834 students graduated and about 2,241 of those students responded to the survey. About 5,147 students graduated in the 1988-89 academic year with 2,532 responding to the follow-up survey.