On February 14, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen released the Graduate Outcomes Report of Class 2021. Despite the ever-challenging social environment, the class of 2021 harvested a high employment rate, outperforming many domestic counterparts. This is a clear indication of the University's strength in cultivating international talents for China.

Class-of-2021 graduates comprised of 423 undergraduate students from the School of Management and Economics (SME), 243 from the School of Data Science (SDS), 124 from the School of Science and Engineering (SSE), 63 from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and 18 from the School of Life and Health Sciences (LHS), with majors spanning from Finance, Economics, Professional Accounting, Global Business Studies, Marketing and Communication, Statistics, Computer Science and Engineering, Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, Electronic Information Engineering, New Energy Science and Engineering, Translation, to Bioinformatics.

Five Highlights of Class of 2021

1. The overall employment rate reached 95.52% with higher placement quality in the face of the uncertainty caused by global pandemic.

2. Diversified graduation outcomes: over 70% of graduates were admitted to top universities across the globe, 25.03% employed by state-owned enterprises, private enterprises, foreign enterprises, institutions, etc., and 0.46% self-employed.

3. Diverse destinations for postgraduate studies (partially due to COVID-19 and global changes): The United States remained the most popular destination for studying abroad, attracting 33.77% of the graduates in this category, followed by Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), CUHK-Shenzhen, and the UK at 19.18%, 15.57% and 12.62%, respectively.

4. A record 70.98% of graduates who went on to study for a Master's / PhD degree were admitted to the top 50 universities worldwide, manifesting the high recognition of our graduates by prestigious universities at home and abroad.

5. Over 70% of graduates who joined the workforce were employed by Fortune 500 Global, Fortune 500 China, listed or multinational enterprises, including Citigroup, Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, CICC, etc.

Footprints across the Globe

A total of 70.03% of the fourth cohort of CUHK-Shenzhen undergraduates chose to pursue further studies after graduation, According to the 2021 QS and U.S. News World University Rankings, 70.98% of graduates who went on to study for a Master's / PhD degree were enrolled in programmes at the top 50 universities worldwide, including MIT, Cambridge University, Harvard University, Imperial College, University College London, ETH Zurich, University of Chicago, National University of Singapore, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Cornell University, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Johns Hopkins University, and University of California, Berkeley.

Under the backdrop of COVID-19, the destinations for studying abroad are diversified. The proportion of those who went to the United States for further studies amounted to 33.77%, including 26 at Columbia University, 18 at Washington University in St. Louis, 14 at Boston University and 12 at Johns Hopkins University. A total of 19.18% chose to pursue postgraduate studies in Hong Kong, China, an increase of 8.31 percentage points over last year. In addition, the number of students choosing CUHK-Shenzhen for further studies has grown as our postgraduate programmes are gaining recognition.

High-quality Talent Sought by Industry

In 2021, 25.03% of the fourth cohort of graduates were employed by enterprises, of which 71.59% were Fortune 500 Global, Fortune 500 China, listed or multinational companies, including industry benchmarks such as CICC, Alibaba, Xiaomi, SF, IBM, Amazon, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Unilever and L'Oreal.

In line with the needs of national strategic development, the employment fields of our undergraduate graduates presented new changes. The top three employment fields include: Computer/Internet/Electronics, Professional services/ Education/ Training, and Finance/ Banking/ Insurance, with the percentage of 39.91, 34.40 and 11.93 respectively. Among them, the field of Computer/Internet/Electronics has witnessed a spectacular increase of 12.24% over the previous class. The employers include Huawei, Tencent, Honor, Pinduoduo, Meituan, Hive Box, Didi, Cisco, IBM, etc.

In terms of regional distribution, nearly 90% of the employed graduates chose to work in major cities such as Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong SAR, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Suzhou, Wuhan, Changsha, Dongguan, and Foshan. This diverse distribution clearly demonstrates that the strong competitiveness of our graduates is highly recognised by the national job market.

To better assess the workplace performance of Class-of-2021, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen conducted an employer survey on the competency and professionalism of graduates. The results showed that the employers were generally satisfied with the overall performance of 2021 graduates. Particularly, communication, learning ability, creativity, initiative and foreign language proficiency were the most satisfactory elements.

Full Community Recognition

CUHK-Shenzhen's high-quality education is valued by leading institutions around the world. On average, one in four students pursuing further studies was offered a place at one of the top 10 universities in the world. Of these, Columbia University alone has made 51 offers to our students, 26 of which have been accepted.

The average annual salary for all graduates reached another record high, increasing by 7.68% to RMB 162,600 compared to the previous cohort. In particular, graduates from the School of Data Science (SDS) recorded an average annual salary of up to RMB180,000 and were sought after by notable Internet companies at home and abroad such as ByteDance, Tencent and Pinduoduo.

The first cohort of graduates from the School of Life and Health Sciences (LHS) has demonstrated their passion for academics. Nearly 50 percent of them proceeded directly to PhD programmes, and more than 80 percent enrolled in master's or doctoral programmes at top 50 graduate schools across the globe. Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University and other prestigious universities alike all spoke glowingly of these inaugural students.