First Destination Survey

The First Destination Survey is a nation-wide survey distributed by colleges and universities by their career centers. It’s an opportunity to share your plans after graduation so those of us at Augsburg know what your plans are, how you’re using your degree right out of college, and if your looking for additional support.

We’ll ask if your employed, pursuing more education, military service, volunteering, or currently seeking a role. Are your plans not confirmed? Simply say that and update your response later (up to six months post-graduation).

Survey FAQs

Why do we ask?

  • This information is valuable to current and future students, as well as academic apartments, advisors, and parents/families of prospective students.
  • Federal law requires that universities provide certain information to current and prospective students. The First Destination Report is used by the National Association of Colleges and Employers to meet federal requirements for disclosure and reporting of data on “student outcomes,” specifically employment and graduate and professional school “placement” following the undergraduate degree.

What do we ask?

  • First destination of graduates including employment, continuing education, military service, volunteering, or seeking. Additional data collected:
    • Graduate and professional schools
    • Employers, job titles, and locations
    • Salary data

Other example questions can be found on this resource from Handshake.

  • We will publish and share student outcomes data, but no fear – your responses are confidential!
  • What does that mean? It means we only publish aggregate data for majors, colleges, and total university. We DO NOT publish individual names or sets of responses attached to individual names.

It should take less than five minutes to complete the survey. The survey is administered via Handshake, so you’ll need your Augsburg SSO to login.

Yes!

  • It is common that many grads are in the process of seeking employment or admission to grad school/continuing education. Tell us where you’re at in the process now. If something changes (getting accepted into grad school, landing a job, etc.) you can update your response for up to six months after graduation!
  • Updating is quick and easy, you don’t have to redo the whole survey, just the questions related to your updated siutation.

  • Undergraduate & Graduate students: Survey access is based on your degree completion that you specified with the University Registrar.
  • Note: The FDS survey is typically available for those who graduate between June-May of a specific year (ex: June 2025 – May 2026). So, if you attend commencement in the spring 2026 but complete classes and graduate in summer 2026, you would complete the FDS for June 2026-May 2027.