Honest answer
Are university placement-percentage claims reliable?
Numbers last checked: 2026-08-02
Short answer
Usually not, in the form they are presented. Of the 14 programmes in our verified set, only Georgia Institute of Technology and New Jersey Institute of Technology publish programme-level graduate salary data of their own — Georgia Institute of Technology a median from its 2022-23 career survey, New Jersey Institute of Technology a mean from a small sample. Every other salary figure we show is an explicitly labelled market band. If a programme is quoting you a placement percentage but has no published outcome report behind it, that number came from marketing, not measurement.
The three questions that break most claims
What counts as placed? Any employment, employment in the field, or employment in the destination country on a work visa? The three produce very different percentages from identical data.
What was the response rate, and how were non-responders treated? A 95% placement rate among the 30% of graduates who replied is not a 95% placement rate, and graduates who did not find work are systematically less likely to respond.
Does it cover international students specifically? Domestic graduates with automatic work rights face none of your visa constraints — blending them in flatters the figure in exactly the way that matters least to you.
What good disclosure looks like
Georgia Institute of Technology's figure is usable because it names what it is: a median starting salary for MS Computer Science graduates from a specific career survey with a stated year. New Jersey Institute of Technology's is a mean from a small sample — we say so, because a mean from a small sample is a fragile statistic and you should discount it accordingly.
Ask any programme for its graduate-outcomes report as a document. If one exists, the numbers in it will be qualified in ways the brochure is not. If none exists, you have your answer about how the brochure figure was produced.
Verify these numbers yourself
- Cost, admission-bar and salary-basis figures for all 14 verified programs: truthpathms.com/data (CC BY 4.0, each row carries its own sources and check date)
- Georgia Tech Career & Salary Survey 2022-23 — median starting salary, MS Computer Science, cc.gatech.edu/facts-and-rankings
- Salary bands: Glassdoor / Indeed / PayScale / ZipRecruiter, accessed July 2026 — role-and-country bands, not per-university outcomes
Costs, salaries, and visa rules change - always confirm against the official program page before making a real decision. TruthPathMS aggregates and cites; it does not originate tuition, salary, or visa data.
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