Graduate Outcomes Survey

We would love you to keep in touch with Heriot-Watt after you’ve finished your studies. Whether you’ve gone on to further study, started your graduate career or are exploring other career avenues, we would love to find out what you're up to so that we can use that information to better support our current students with their career planning.

To help us do this, Graduate Outcomes is a national survey which takes place 15 months after graduation and records what students do after they leave university.

About the survey

Each year the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) uses the Graduate Outcomes survey to collect information from graduates of all universities about what they go on to do.
The information you provide helps to inform students’ choices, develop higher education policy and enables universities to make improvements for their students.

Why we'd like you to take part

We are really keen to know how you have got on after finishing your degree programme. We value your input and it is important that we know what our graduates think. It only takes a few minutes to complete the survey and your responses and data will be treated with care and in strict accordance with data protection legislation.

How to make sure you can take part

You will be asked to complete the Graduate Outcomes survey 15 months after you graduate and will be contacted via telephone and email on behalf of Heriot-Watt and HESA. The survey can be completed online or over the telephone but we must have your current email address and telephone number to contact you so please update these with the Alumni team if they change.

Any questions?

For any general questions about the survey, please contact the Careers Service. Find out more about HESA and their role as a trusted source of HE data and analysis.

What happens to the information you provide?

Graduate Outcomes data will be collected by HESA as part of their wider data collection and analysis activities. Find out how HESA protects your data. HESA will share survey data with Heriot-Watt who will hold your data for five years before deleting it.

Details gathered as part of the survey may be used by the University to provide you with relevant updates and opportunities. Personalised data will be forwarded only to appropriate staff within your department when requested for course completion records and shared with relevant professional bodies where required.

Anonymised data and resulting statistics may also be provided to University staff and external professional bodies for the purposes of further research into the graduate labour market and students’ career destination trends.

Find out more about the University's Data Protection Policy and Data Protection Notice to Students, click here. Further information about the Graduates Outcomes survey for students and graduates is available on the HESA website.