NACE first-destination survey compliance is a set of four rules governing how an institution defines its graduating class, when it may collect outcomes, how many outcomes it must know, and how it reports them. Per NACE's Standards and Protocols revised September 2025, the graduating class runs July 1 to June 30, collection closes December 31 of the class year, reporting to NACE runs January 1 to April 30 of the following year, and the minimum knowledge rate for bachelor's degree graduates is 65 percent. Institutions that miss compliance almost never miss it on the template or the deadline. They miss it on the knowledge rate, because a survey alone rarely resolves two thirds of a graduating class. Prentus works on that constraint specifically, pairing a first-destination survey with automated outcomes scanning so unresponsive graduates still resolve to a known outcome.
The short answer
Cohort: July 1 to June 30. Collection: graduation through December 31 of the class year. Reporting to NACE: January 1 to April 30 of the following year. Minimum knowledge rate: 65 percent for bachelor's degree graduates. Seven mutually exclusive outcome categories. The operational deadline is December 31, not April 30.
This guide summarizes NACE's published first-destination standards as of September 29, 2026. NACE revises its standards and protocols periodically. Confirm every requirement against NACE's current first-destination standards before you submit.
The compliance calendar
Three dates define the entire reporting cycle, and confusing two of them is the most common process failure:
Define the graduating class
July 1 to June 30NACE defines a graduating class by a twelve-month academic year running July 1 through June 30. The Class of 2026 means everyone who completed a credential between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026, regardless of when they walked at commencement.
Collect outcomes
Graduation through December 31Collection runs from each student’s graduation date through December 31 of the class year. An outcome recorded on January 5 does not count toward that class, which is why December is the month knowledge rates are won or lost.
Report to NACE
January 1 to April 30Institutions submit aggregated results to NACE between January 1 and April 30 of the following year. The submission uses NACE’s first-destination template, so the underlying data has to map to NACE’s categories rather than an internal schema.
The distinction that matters: December 31 is the collection cutoff and April 30 is the submission deadline. A team that plans around April 30 arrives in January to find that the window for finding outcomes already closed and the knowledge rate is locked. January through April is for aggregation and validation, not for discovery.
The knowledge rate is the actual requirement
The knowledge rate is the share of a graduating cohort for whom the institution has a known, verifiable outcome: graduates with a known outcome divided by total graduates in the cohort. NACE sets the minimum at 65 percent for bachelor's degree graduates.
It is worth being precise about what this measures, because it is frequently misread. The knowledge rate says nothing about how good your outcomes are. It measures how many of them you know. A school placing 90 percent of its graduates into strong roles with a 40 percent knowledge rate cannot report compliantly. A school with unremarkable placement and an 80 percent knowledge rate can. Compliance is a data-coverage problem before it is a placement problem, and the two are often confused in the same conversation.
This is also why survey design is rarely the lever that fixes a shortfall. Response rates on a post-graduation survey sent to alumni who have already left campus rarely approach two thirds of a cohort on their own, no matter how well the instrument is written. Institutions that clear 65 percent almost always do it by combining sources: survey responses, administrative and registrar records, outcomes known to faculty and advisors, clearinghouse enrollment data for graduates continuing their education, and publicly available employment evidence. See the first-destination data gap for what that shortfall costs an institution in practice.
The seven outcome categories
NACE's standard resolves every graduate into exactly one of seven mutually exclusive categories:
| Category | Definition |
|---|---|
| Employed | Reported separately as full-time and part-time, including freelance and self-employment. |
| Continuing education | Enrolled in a program of continuing education, such as graduate or professional school. |
| Military service | Serving in the armed forces. |
| Volunteer or service program | Participating in a program of voluntary service, such as AmeriCorps or Peace Corps. |
| Seeking employment | Actively looking for work and not yet placed. |
| Seeking continuing education | Actively applying to further education and not yet enrolled. |
| Not seeking | Not currently pursuing employment or further education. |
Because the categories are mutually exclusive, the boundaries are where precision is lost. The common failure is an institution that collects outcomes in its own schema and maps to NACE categories in January, which forces judgment calls about graduates who are working part time while still looking for full-time work. Mapping to NACE categories at collection time avoids relitigating those boundaries under deadline pressure.
Tools that produce a NACE first-destination report
Most institutions use a platform to collect outcomes and generate the aggregate submission. The four below are the ones that come up most often, and they are not solving the same part of the problem.
Editorial disclosure: Prentus publishes this guide and is ranked first. Every tool receives a clear best-fit case, a named limitation, and a requirement to confirm during evaluation. The ranking favors closing the knowledge rate gap, which is the requirement institutions most often miss and the problem Prentus is built to solve.
| Tool | Collection method | NACE export | Named limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 Prentus | Automated outcomes scanning plus a customizable first-destination survey | Outcome categories mapped to the NACE structure for template submission | Scanned outcomes still need institutional review before they are reported |
| #2 Handshake | First-destination survey module with response management and dashboards | One-click download of NACE-formatted aggregate data | Requires education level and major on student profiles for compliant reporting |
| #3 Symplicity | Outcomes collection within the broader career services management system | Outcomes reporting configured to NACE standards | Collection depth depends heavily on how the instance was configured at implementation |
| #4 12twenty | Outcomes collection with detailed salary and employer reporting | Outcomes reporting aligned to first-destination and school-specific standards | Oriented toward graduate and professional programs more than large undergraduate cohorts |
#1 Best for raising the knowledge rate without adding survey outreach staff
Prentus
The binding constraint on first-destination compliance is almost never the template, it is the knowledge rate. Prentus attacks that directly by combining a customizable first-destination survey with automated scanning of public employment signals, so graduates who never answer a survey can still resolve to a known outcome. Outcomes are mapped to NACE categories as they are collected rather than reshaped in a spreadsheet each January. The honest limitation is that a scanned outcome is evidence, not an attestation, and a school still decides what it is willing to report.
Confirm during evaluation
Ask what percentage of a typical graduating class resolves through scanning alone, and what review workflow sits between a scanned outcome and a reported one.
#2 Best if your campus already runs first-destination collection inside Handshake
Handshake
Handshake is the tool NACE itself points to most often in its standards material, and its first-destination module is built to produce the NACE aggregate download directly. For a campus already using Handshake as its career platform, this is the shortest path from collected responses to a submittable file. The requirement worth checking early is data hygiene: the NACE-formatted export depends on education level and major being populated on student profiles, and incomplete profile data is a common reason a download does not validate.
Confirm during evaluation
Verify that education level and major are populated across the full graduating cohort before December, not after, since backfilling those fields in January is what breaks timelines.
#3 Best for institutions standardized on Symplicity CSM for career operations
Symplicity
NACE links to a Symplicity tutorial from its standards and protocols material, which makes it a supported path for institutions already running Symplicity CSM. The outcomes module sits alongside advising, employer relations, and job posting in one system, so the first-destination data stays where the rest of career services operations already live. Configuration matters more here than with a packaged module: two campuses on the same product can have materially different collection quality depending on decisions made at implementation.
Confirm during evaluation
Ask to see your own instance’s outcomes configuration and category mapping rather than a generic demo, since NACE alignment here is a configuration outcome.
#4 Best for reporting depth and benchmarking at graduate and professional schools
12twenty
12twenty built its reputation on outcomes reporting depth, particularly in law, business, and other graduate programs where salary detail and employer breakdowns are expected rather than optional. For those programs it is frequently the strongest reporting instrument available. Undergraduate career services offices running very large cohorts sometimes find the model heavier than they need, since the reporting richness that makes it valuable at a professional school assumes a level of per-student data collection that is harder to sustain across many thousands of graduates.
Confirm during evaluation
Ask how the platform performs at your actual cohort size, and whether the reporting depth you are paying for is data your institution will realistically collect.
The compliance sequence
- Define the cohort. Every graduate who completed a credential between July 1 and June 30, regardless of commencement date.
- Map to NACE categories at collection time. Configure collection so each outcome resolves to one of the seven categories rather than an internal schema reshaped later.
- Run multi-source collection through December 31. Survey, administrative records, advisor knowledge, clearinghouse data, and public employment evidence together, not the survey alone.
- Measure the knowledge rate weekly through the fall. A shortfall against 65 percent is only fixable while the collection window is still open.
- Aggregate, validate, and submit between January 1 and April 30. Check category assignments and required fields such as education level and major before submission.
For the mechanics of automating collection, see first-destination survey automation and NACE compliance tooling. For how surveys and automated scanning compare as collection methods, read first-destination survey versus automated outcomes scanning. For the department-level view of where this work sits, see the Prentus career services solution.
Frequently asked questions
What are the NACE first-destination survey compliance requirements?
NACE first-destination survey compliance has four defining requirements. First, the graduating class is defined by a July 1 to June 30 academic year, so the Class of 2026 is everyone who completed a credential between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026. Second, outcomes are collected from each student’s graduation date through December 31 of the class year, and outcomes captured after that cutoff do not count toward that class. Third, results are reported to NACE between January 1 and April 30 of the following year using NACE’s first-destination template. Fourth, NACE sets a minimum knowledge rate of 65 percent for bachelor’s degree graduates, meaning an institution must have a known outcome for at least 65 percent of that cohort. These are drawn from NACE’s Standards and Protocols, revised September 2025.
What is a knowledge rate and what is the minimum?
The knowledge rate is the share of a graduating cohort for whom the institution has a known, verifiable first-destination outcome, calculated as graduates with a known outcome divided by total graduates in the cohort. NACE sets the minimum at 65 percent for bachelor’s degree graduates. It is the single hardest requirement to satisfy, because it does not measure how good the outcomes are, it measures how many of them you actually know. A school with excellent placement and a 40 percent knowledge rate cannot report compliantly, while a school with average placement and an 80 percent knowledge rate can. Survey response alone rarely reaches 65 percent, which is why most institutions combine survey data with administrative records, faculty and advisor knowledge, and public employment evidence.
What outcome categories does NACE require?
NACE’s first-destination standard sorts every graduate into one of seven categories: employed, reported separately as full-time and part-time and including freelance and self-employment; enrolled in a program of continuing education; serving in the military; participating in a program of voluntary service; seeking employment; seeking continuing education; and not seeking employment or continuing education. The categories are mutually exclusive, so each graduate resolves to exactly one. Institutions that collect outcomes in an internal schema and map to NACE categories afterward tend to lose precision at the boundaries, particularly between part-time employment and seeking employment, which is why mapping to NACE categories at collection time is cleaner than reshaping data in January.
When is the NACE first-destination survey deadline?
There are two dates that matter and they are often confused. December 31 of the class year is the collection cutoff, the last day an outcome can be captured and still count toward that graduating class. The reporting window to NACE then runs January 1 to April 30 of the following year. Teams that treat April 30 as the deadline discover in January that the collection window already closed and the knowledge rate is whatever it is. Practically, the operational deadline is December 31, and the January to April window is for aggregation, validation, and submission rather than for finding more outcomes.
Which tools produce a NACE-compliant first-destination export?
Handshake offers a one-click download of NACE-formatted aggregate data and is the tool NACE references most directly in its standards material, though the export depends on education level and major being populated on student profiles. Symplicity provides outcomes reporting configured to NACE standards, with quality depending substantially on how the instance was configured. 12twenty offers strong outcomes reporting depth, particularly for graduate and professional programs. Prentus maps outcomes to NACE categories at collection time and combines a customizable first-destination survey with automated scanning of public employment signals, which targets the knowledge rate rather than the export format. The export is rarely the hard part; reaching 65 percent is.
Does a first-destination survey have to be a survey?
No. NACE’s standards govern what counts as a known outcome and how outcomes are categorized, not the single method used to obtain them. Institutions routinely combine survey responses with administrative records, employment data known to faculty and advisors, national clearinghouse enrollment data for continuing education, and publicly available employment evidence. That combination is what makes a 65 percent knowledge rate reachable, because survey response rates alone rarely get there on their own. What NACE does require is that the reported outcome is one the institution can stand behind, which means any automated or scanned evidence needs a review step before it is reported.
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