Before we report out the results of the Class of 2016 Check In Survey, we have sad news to share. As some of you may already know, your classmate Mary Wilk passed away on July 30 from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. You can read her obituary here. Our thoughts are with Mary’s family and friends, and with all of you who knew her. If there’s anything we can do to support you, please let us know. 

Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the Class of 2016 Check In Survey. Today, we have the results to share with you.

But first, we should announce our giveaway winners — Rheannon Burris, Tyler Molleur, and Rachel Seigel. Congrats! T-shirts are on their way to you.

1. What are you up to this summer?

A little bit of everything! More than half of the respondents are doing internships, working part-time, or traveling and the other half are working full-time or going to graduate school.

2. What kinds of posts would you like to see on Afterword?

Career advice and alumni profiles are the leading favorites. We’ll make sure to keep those coming and sprinkle in a good mix of My First Year Out, campus updates, and silly stuff as well.

3. What kind of event are you likely to attend?

So you like happy hours? Good, so do we. Derrick will keep you informed about when and where happy hours are taking place. And you’ll be the first to know when there’s a big ol’ party planned.

4. What are you most connected to at UVM?

More than half of you answered that you’re most connected with your UVM friends. Burlington and student clubs and athletics teams were the next most common answers.

Our takeaways

Surveys like this help us tailor content to your class. Knowing what we know now, we’ll keep the Get off the Pile posts coming and mix up the rest of the content around alumni profiles, graduate school, campus updates and other fun stuff. We’ll also work on getting some happy hours on the books and finding ways to keep you connected to your UVM friends, clubs and teams. That said, we try to make sure there’s always something for everyone. So if you are interested in a dinner and want to hear about faculty members, we’ll have posts for you too.

It’s been two months since graduation, and we want to check in to see how are you doing.

Our job is to help you navigate this year of transition. We’re not keeping track of how many of you have jobs, or don’t.

Nor do we care if you’re living at home (been there!) or on a friend’s couch.

We’re looking to get an honest idea of where you are and what you need so that we can support you through this challenging and exciting first year in the proverbial “real world”. The more we know, the more helpful we can be.

So, we’ve put together a quick five question survey to touch base.

To make it more fun we’re giving things away — three randomly selected survey respondents will win a UVM shirt!

Fill out the survey and enter to win a UVM shirt now!

The results are in from the survey we did two weeks ago! Thanks to everyone who participated and congrats to our giveaway winners: Julia Connell, Kayla Fay and Taylor Feuss!

Below is a summary of your survey responses about what you’d like to see here on Afterword in the coming year.

Question 1: How frequently should we be communicating with you.
This one was nearly a three way split between weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. Monthly won out with 38% and we’ll probably scale back to every other week soon.

Question 2: Who/what do you want to hear about?
More than 75% of respondents chose ‘Job, career and networking information’ and it’s clear you also want to hear about classmates and other UVM alumni. We’ll focus on both of these topics and pepper in other fun stuff along the way.

Question 3: What is your ideal alumni event?
For the second year in a row, happy hours won out as the type of event you’d like to see from UVM. Noted.

It’s been just over a year since we launched Afterword for the Class of 2015. And in that year we’ve been focused on your first year out of UVM. We hope you’ve found it helpful.

Today we’d like to pause and ask for your input before moving forward into the next year’s content. What’s working? What’s missing? How can we better help you?

Please take a moment to fill out this quick three-question survey.

And since you know we love giveaways here on Afterword, we’re spicing up today’s survey by giving away three UVM portfolios to three lucky people who fill out the survey. It’s a handy way to look professional and rep your alma mater at the same time.

Take the survey and enter to win today.

Thanks for your feedback!
— Ryan & Derrick