What to do after graduation: a checklist for Imperial graduates

Find out your conferral date first. Imperial gives it in university emails, or your department can confirm it, and nearly every deadline below counts from it.

Your Imperial email stays readable in the Outlook web app for six months after conferral, and Blackboard, Panopto and Zoom run for six months too. OneDrive is shorter, at three months, and electronic library resources and remote access stop on the conferral date. Imperial's own advice is to move personal correspondence, job applications included, to a personal address, switch any subscriptions registered to your Imperial email, and back up your mailbox and files before the deadlines arrive.

Your degree documents come in two forms. The My Documents tile in My Imperial holds electronic copies of your award documents, which you can download or share with an employer; six months after conferral it closes to you, and you request documents through Imperial's official document service instead. The paper certificate and transcript aren't handed out at the ceremony. They're posted within three months of conferral to your My Certificate Address, so make sure that's somewhere you'll still be.

One condition to know about: if tuition fees are still owed, Imperial won't issue a certificate until the debt is paid in full, and fees left unpaid past the deadline can also cost you your place at the ceremony.

The months after a degree have no timetable, and that's exactly the risk. Nobody needs the perfect job by the ceremony; what you need is movement, because recent experience gives an interviewer something to ask about, where an empty stretch only raises questions.

Imperial's Careers Service doesn't stop when you leave. Graduates can keep getting expert support from it for up to three years after graduating, and beyond that there's help aimed at experienced graduates. Use it while your course is fresh: for applications, for a second opinion before an interview, or for working out what comes next.

Many large graduate schemes open their applications in the autumn, while plenty of employers hire all year round. Spend the time before then on what you control: research the sectors you're drawn to, update your CV with your final result, and practise the tests and the interviews.

Your course will soon be spread across the world, and right now everyone is still a message away. Connect with coursemates, supervisors and the people from group projects before you go your separate ways. Later, as an alumnus, you can return the favour for the students behind you, through careers events, mentoring and work shadowing.

"Your relationship with Imperial doesn't end when you graduate."

— Imperial College London

Planning to work in Britain once you've finished? Read this section before the others, because jobs, flats and bank accounts all hinge on your visa.

The Graduate visa is unsponsored: no employer has to back you, and most kinds of work are open to you. How long it lasts depends on your degree and on when you apply, so look up the current length on GOV.UK before planning around it; a PhD or other doctorate gives three years.

You can apply once Imperial has reported your successful completion to the Home Office; there's no need to hold off until the ceremony or a certificate. Apply while your Student visa is still in date. A decision normally arrives within eight weeks, during which you may remain in the country.

Going home? Close or convert the bank account, give proper notice on your tenancy, and point your My Certificate Address at your next address. All three are quicker to do in London than from overseas.

Check your contract end date against your ceremony. Undergraduates graduate at Commemoration Day in October, months after most courses finish, so many come back to London for it; postgraduates and PhDs graduate at Graduation Days in June. If your tenancy ends first, or family are travelling in, book somewhere to stay early.

A disagreement about a deposit takes five minutes to settle in person and weeks once you've moved away.

Staying in London? Budget for council tax. Students are exempt only while their course runs, not up to the ceremony, and once anyone in a shared house stops being a student, the household's exemption goes. Let your council know when your situation changes.

Banks usually convert a student account into a graduate one automatically, but the interest-free overdraft won't last forever, so check how and when yours shrinks.

Repayments begin only when your pay passes your plan's threshold. On an undergraduate plan your employer deducts 9% of the amount over it (6% on a Postgraduate Loan), and in any pay period below the threshold, nothing is taken. Your plan is shown in your online repayment account; the thresholds themselves are published on GOV.UK.

Audit everything tied to your Imperial email, software licences and subscriptions included, while you can still log in. Leaving the area? Sign up with a GP near your new home, since NHS registration doesn't move with you.

Imperial doesn't hand out certificates at its ceremonies. The paper certificate and transcript are posted no later than three months after conferral, to your My Certificate Address, or, if you've never set one, to the home address Imperial holds for you. Graduating in absentia works exactly the same way.

Requests for proof tend to arrive at short notice, from an employer, a visa caseworker or a professional body. The My Documents tile lets you share electronic copies straight away while you still have access, and after that the official document service takes requests.

The day you leave, you join a community of more than 270,000 Imperial graduates. Alumni benefits include Imperial Plexus, the online platform, access to online resources and campus libraries, and the Student Union bar, along with alumni events around the world and local groups and associations.

Keep your details current through the alumni contact form, so Imperial can reach you, and so can the national Graduate Outcomes survey, which contacts graduates around 15 months after they finish.

Few items here come with a hard date: OneDrive at three months, email and My Documents at six, and a visa for some of you. Tackle those first. Career steps have no deadline, so they're easy to postpone; put them in your diary like a lecture.