Question: The charts above show what UK graduate and postgraduate students who did not go into full-time work did after leaving college in 2008. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
Band 8+ Sample Answer:
(Intro & Overview) The two bar charts show the destination of UK graduates and postgraduates in 2008 after leaving college. The data excludes full-time work and gives information about four destinations: part time work, voluntary work, further study and unemployment. Overall, we can also see that there were significantly more graduates than postgraduates (by around a factor of 10) and both groups showed similar trends, with the majority going into further study after leaving college. Part-time work and unemployment were moderately common destinations while engaging in voluntary work was the least popular.
(Detail 1) Turning to the detail and looking at UK graduates, close to 30,000 students opted for further study (29,665), which was the clear favourite in terms of destination. By contrast, the number of graduate students taking up part time work or becoming unemployed was comparatively low at 17,735 and 16,235 respectively. However the lowest figure was produced by those choosing voluntary work at only 3,500.
(Detail 2) Regarding UK postgraduates in 2008, the number of students who continued to study was the highest, at 2,725, with part-time work a close second at 2,535. This second option was shown to be more popular than with graduates leaving college. In contrast 1,625 ended up unemployed and a mere 345 postgrads opted for work in the voluntary sector. As you can see, the figures for both groups showed the same overall trend, with each of the four destinations demonstrating a ratio of about 10 to 1 for graduate vs postgraduate students. (252 words)
Words: Nick Kemp, former IELTS examiner.
Image: Cambridge
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