Emory College of Arts and Sciences launched the Class of 2024 into the world last spring prepared for fulfilling careers across multiple industries and rewarding graduate study at the nation's best universities.

The annual Career and Professional Development survey, conducted six months after Commencement, shows that 98% of the 2024 graduates were working, studying or volunteering, with only 1.9% seeking their next step after Emory. That's roughly the same outcome for the Class of 2023 .

While this year's graduating class enters a more uncertain world for both employment and educational opportunities, Emory's liberal arts excellence continues to equip students with the transferrable critical-thinking, analytical and communication skills that the market values, says Amanda Long, assistant vice provost of career and professional development.

"We encourage our students, even those who know exactly what they want to do, not to have a fixed mindset," Long says. "What we consistently hear from employers is that Emory students not only come with a variety of skills and experiences, but they are knowledgeable about how to apply their skills in any role."

Creativity and adaptability developed alongside broad knowledge also prove to be assets for graduates continuing their education, including those who have competed successfully for the most prestigious merit scholarships and fellowships, such as the Fulbright , Goldwater , NOAA Hollings , P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans and many more.

Emory's National Scholarships and Fellowships office provides information and support to pursue those awards as part of the Pathways Center. It and other Pathways offices - including those focused on undergraduate research, experiential learning and professional development - help students develop personal strategies to translate their skills into professional lives of meaning.

Meet three graduates from the Class of 2024 who are pursuing purposeful next steps thanks to their Emory education.

Marrying medicine with dance

Taking a strategic approach to post-Emory possibilities led Dominique Jones to Harvard University, where she joined just the third cohort of its Media, Medicine and Health master's program.

Jones, a Columbus, Ohio, native who extensively studied ballet since grade school, was weighing a professional dance career when COVID shut down live performances and led her to Emory. She capitalized on Emory College's interdisciplinary offerings with a dual degree in dance and human health, graduating with an honors thesis that examined how pregnant dancers navigated ballet culture.

Jones is continuing her health storytelling at Harvard, with a capstone dance film looking at postpartum depression in Black women. She starts at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in the fall, with plans to become an OB-GYN.

"Even though I found this master's program on my own, I relied on mentors in the (Pathways) Pre-Health Advising office as a check-in for what I was doing," says Jones, who conducted undergraduate research at Emory's School of Medicine and with the Grady Trauma Project. "Those are the connections and people who helped me move forward."

Finding a unique path into health care

While the Pathways Center offers connections, and a bridge to alumni through Career Treks and Networking Nights, Emory students also help one another reach their highest professional objectives.

That goal was fuzzy when Neha Murthy arrived at Emory from Augusta, Georgia. The daughter of a radiologist, she took pre-med requirements in biology and chemistry her first year.

She took classes, worked as a biology lab assistant and held a lab internship conducting sickle cell research and study of bioethics. They all confirmed only what she didn't want to do - become a doctor, researcher or work at a pharmaceutical company.

Murthy's path forward came when Simran Mallik, a friend and mentor who graduated in 2023, learned how much Murthy had loved biology, anthropology, linear algebra and multivariable calculus courses.

Malik was majoring in quantitative sciences (QSS) with a concentration in biological anthropology and directed Murthy to the innovative program, which anchors data mastery with another field of study.

Murthy spent the next two years completing QSS major with a concentration in anthropology and human biology. She also served as vice president, then president, of the Emory College Council. An internship with Emory Institutional Research and Design Support and a conversation with former Provost Ravi Bellamkonda led to interviews at Emory Healthcare, where she now works on the AI strategy team as a data and AI analyst.

"I work as a bridge between the tech and strategy teams and couldn't ask for a better place to be," says Murthy, who has conducted predictive modeling, built dashboards and organized the recent "AI Showcase: From Idea to Reality" event. "I get LinkedIn messages all the time from Emory students asking to have coffee to talk about my role, and I always make time. I got so much from Emory and I want to give back."

A creative approach to investment banking

For fellow 2024 graduate Ashton Rollins, Emory offered a powerful connection: His grandfather was a psychology professor and former director of study abroad, and both parents are alumni.

Still, the New Jersey native forged his own path, pairing an economics major with his mechanical engineering degree as part of Emory's dual-degree program with Georgia Institute of Technology.

Rollins gleaned insight from other students, who demonstrated how his passion for mathematical modeling could apply to finance. He completed his first internship - in technology and innovation - during the 2019 merger of SunTrust and BB&T into Truist.

Rollins held three additional internships, including one in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. After graduating in 2024, he joined a tech start-up to gain hands-on experience in the Web3 industry, which focuses on a user-centric and decentralized internet. This July, he will become an investment banking analyst on Goldman Sachs' Healthcare team in New York City.

"Emory has incredible students who are willing to support you and share a wide variety of perspectives," Rollins says. "That breadth of thinking, and the ability to incorporate different approaches, is critical in investment banking, where creative problem solving is required every day."