Report: Top graduates head to western region, private firms

More graduates from Tsinghua University decided to work at private companies instead of traditional State-owned-enterprises, according to the university's data from 2018.

Among the 19 universities that calculated the employment rate in private-and State-owned enterprises, 17 of them saw a higher employment rate in private companies, data showed.

Renowned private Chinese enterprises such as Huawei, JD, Tencent and Alibaba stood out as the preferred companies for graduates. For example, 263 of the 2018 graduates of Southeast University and 211 graduates of Wuhan University were recruited by Huawei, making the company the biggest winner in the 2018 employment battle at the two universities.

Graduate school is another priority, with 78.3 percent of graduates from Tsinghua University and 69.22 percent of those from Fudan University choosing to seek further education after their undergraduate years.

The report also noted many graduates' starting annual salaries have surpassed the 100,000 yuan ($14,826) threshold in 2018.

The average annual salary of the 2,731 surveyed graduates of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics is 153,100 yuan. More than 20 percent of college graduates of the Beijing Institute of Technology earn over 150,000 yuan a year, and nearly half of its postgraduates and more than 70 percent of its PhD graduates posted an annual salary of more than 150,000 yuan, the report said.