When the Class of 2025 step through FitzRandolph Gate to begin their post-Princeton life, two-thirds self-reported that they will serve the nation or humanity, and over one-third expect to earn $90K or more per year, putting them at approximately the 75th percentile of all Americans. Read on to dive into seniors’ postgraduate plans.
Graduate school or academia is the most common post-graduate plan for the Class of 2025. Still, the proportion of seniors planning to pursue this field has dropped dramatically this year: between 17 to 19 percent of survey respondents indicated that they were pursuing graduate school or academia in the Classes of 2022 to 2024, while this year, as colleges and universities have shrunk or cut entirely graduate school admissions in the face of federal funding cuts, just 12.6 percent of seniors indicated that they were pursuing graduate school or academia. Similarly to the Class of 2024, though, about 65 percent of graduating seniors characterized their post-graduate plans as “in the nation’s service and in the service of humanity.”
As other institutions of higher education see a rise in alumni donations, 66 percent of Princeton’s Class of 2025 said they would not donate to Princeton at any point in their lifetime, even though around 45 percent of undergraduate alumni donate every year. Still, over 15 percent reported they would donate directly to the University, while the rest reported they would donate to a specific program at Princeton. Only 12.3 percent of graduating seniors reported that they raised over $20K in one summer, down from 2024 when 17.4 percent reported they made over $20K. Around 47 percent of students planning to get into software engineering made over $20K in a single summer, seven percent higher than finance, the next highest field. Across the board, the most common expected income bracket for graduating Princetonians was still $30K to $59K, consistent with the Class of 2024. The percentage of respondents who said their post-graduation income would be $0, however, rose from 6.3 percent to 8.9 percent.