The Class of 2017 graduated with a 97 percent placement rate: 54 percent of graduates are employed, 36 percent are attending graduate school, and the other 7 percent are volunteering, pursuing a fellowship, or taking a gap year. Of those students already employed, 47 percent are working in the UAE, followed by 8 percent in the United States and 5 percent in Pakistan. In the UAE, the most popular careers for graduates are in government and military, banking and finance and consulting. In the Middle East and Northern Africa, the mean starting income for graduates is 172,000 AED, which is just under 47,000 USD.

In total, 16 percent of graduates are employed in the education sector, followed by banking, finance and consulting. Outside of the UAE, mean initial salaries are 188,000 AED in Western Europe, 199,000 AED in East Asia and the Pacific, and 81,000 AED in South Asia. 34 percent of students are employed to a company they had previously interned with.

Of the 36 percent of students heading to graduate school, 20 percent are attending for science and math, 16 percent for engineering, 16 percent for international relations and public policy and 11 percent for social science. 83 percent of graduate school applicants were accepted to two or more programs while 65 percent received scholarships. The most popular destination for graduate school is the US, with 39 percent of graduate students continuing their education at American universities including Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Yale. 43 percent of graduate students are pursuing a Master of Science, 25 percent a Master of Arts, 18 percent a PhD, 5 percent a law degree and 4 percent a medical degree.

The Class of 2017 also yielded two Rhodes Scholars: Dubai Abulhoul and Guillame Sylvain. Abulhoul, from Dubai, is studying diplomacy and global government at Oxford University, while Sylvain, from Canada, is studying law. Annalisa Galgano, from the US, was named a Fulbright scholar and is conducting research on the refugee crisis in Athens, Greece. Benjamin Marcus-Willers, also from the US, was named a Critical Language Scholar and is studying in Changchun, China.

40 percent of the class graduated with a degree in the social sciences, 28 percent in the arts and humanities, 17 percent in the sciences and 16 percent in engineering. Graduates are now spread across 40 different countries, with 62 percent placed in a country other than their home country. While only 19 percent of graduates are from the Middle East and North Africa, 30 percent are now living in the region, largely because of students who have decided to stay to work here in the UAE.