Introduction

Deconstructing Penn Pathways is an interactive data project conducted by The Signal, in partnership with Career Services, that links what students did each summer to their pursuits post-grad. Our purpose is to alleviate confusion around choosing a “perfect internship” and expose students to a diverse set of possible journeys to take here at Penn. The sample includes 2231 students in the Class of 2017 surveyed by Career Services, with 553 from the Wharton School, 340 from the Engineering School, 129 from the Nursing School, and 1317 from the College of Arts and Sciences.

Methodology

Data was collected by Career Services in their annual survey and analyzed and visualized using R and Plot.ly. Categories were defined by academic advisors from each school. The Signal did not alter any category, except for detailing the type of “Healthcare” for the Nursing School as opposed to keeping it general for other schools for better data visualization. In addition, we created an “Other” category that includes people who did not complete the survey for that year and categories with an insignificant number of students pursuing them. The statistics below apply only to students in this survey and may not accurately reflect the Penn undergraduate class as a whole.

How to Interpret Visualizations:

Each bar is a category and its height represents its popularity among students that year. By hovering over the bar in this example, readers can determine that 64 students interned in Technology that year. Students came from two different categories the year prior and went into three different categories the year after. By hovering over the linked path, readers can see the number of students that pursued A (labeled as “Target”) after pursuing B (labeled as “Source”) the previous year.