The world’s first School of Education and Social Policy, we are committed to helping people, places, and institutions thrive.
Career Outcomes
School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) alumni are prepared for a wide range of careers in the for-profit, non-profit, and governmental sectors. Learn more about career pathways for our graduates.
Graduates are prepared to teach first through sixth grade. Elementary Teaching is also part of the accelerated master’s pathway, giving undergraduates the chance to work on their master's degree while earning their bachelor's degree.
An applied curriculum that provides a solid foundation for graduate work in education, students are drawn to social work, law, medicine, public policy, and counseling. Graduates also work in human resources, curriculum development, research, and teaching.
Prepares students for leadership roles in business, consulting, change management, financial services, instructional design, training, or organizational development jobs. Quantitative second majors or minors, such as data science or economics, are popular.
Graduates often work in the fields of business and consulting, education technology, instructional design, museum education, educational research, and curriculum design. Undergraduate students can combine learning sciences with computer science.
Students study issues related to the environment, education and health care. Graduates work in related fields, including public policy, government, advocacy, policy research and analysis, education, law-related fields, nonprofits, and business.
How She Got There
Alexandra Sims-Jones ('10), founder and CEO of APS & Associates
Explore the pathway of an alumna who studied social policy.
Sims, who studied social policy, joined the Coro Fellowship Program after graduating from Northwestern. She went on to serve as state director for Missouri in President Obama’s 2012 campaign and later directed the country’s largest voter registration campaign, registering over 400,000 voters in four months as the founder and first executive director of Chicago-based Every Vote Counts. In 2016, Sims launched her public affairs firm, APS & Associates; she and her team have collaborated with partners across the country, including Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Obama Foundation, Bally’s Casino and more. Honored by Crain's Chicago Business as one of the city's outstanding young leaders, she urges SESP students to view their careers not as a series of disconnected dots but rather as a funnel.
Experiential Learning
The School of Education and Social Policy’s much-loved practicum–a quarter long off-campus internship for juniors coupled with an academic seminar–has jump-started the careers of countless alumni. The program is offered year-round, and students can be remote or hybrid in US locations. Those who wish to study abroad can complete the practicum in another country. Students pursuing teaching gain classroom experience through their practicum and student teaching in their senior year.
US Department of the Treasury, Bureau of Fiscal Service
Valor International School
YMCA of the USA
Graduate and Professional Degrees
29%
of SESP graduates enroll in graduate or professional school the year after they graduate
Recent Graduate and Professional School Placements
Babson College
Brown University
Erasmus International Master’s in Global Markets
Harvard Law School
Hack Reactor
Howard University
HEC Paris
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Texas A & M University
University of California, Berkeley
The University of Chicago
University of Colorado Boulder
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
University of Oxford
University of Southern California
University of Virginia
Vanderbilt University
Yale University
Yeshiva University
SESP's Civic Engagement Certificate
The two-year, six-credit program helps students understand the forces that affect communities and gives them a deeper grasp of how to work for positive change. Open to all Northwestern freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, the program blends community work with classroom learning, focusing on participatory policymaking, budgeting, and policy implementation for social change.
Isabella Twocrow was Northwestern’s first recipient of the Native American Congressional Internship from the Morris K. and Stewart L. Udall Foundation, a federal agency that supports work in fields related to tribal policy, the environment and Native American health care. Twocrow, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is Oglala Lakota and a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation. She is interested in tribal law and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Learning and Organizational Change and Native American and Indigenous studies.
Read more about Twocrow’s experience in Northwestern Magazine.
Keep Exploring
Connect with and learn more about School of Education and Social Policy graduates.
Learn more about the career pathways of School of Education and Social Policy alumni in SESP Magazine. The magazine, published twice annually for alumni and friends of the School of Education and Social Policy, also highlights current SESP students and faculty.