Abstract
This study presents a descriptive statistical analysis on grade characteristics and employment rates of three ocean-related departments at a university. The ocean-related departments belong to the same college along with the other six departments. To obtain the correlation between the grade characteristics and employment rates, we carried out the followings. Firstly, four-year employment rates and six-semester GPAs (grade point averages) were obtained from the nine departments. Secondly, the box-and-whisker plots were constructed for each data set to capture the grade characteristics (mean, the first quartile, median, third quartile, whisker+, and Q3 box). Finally, the grade characteristics and employment rates were correlated. It is shown from the correlation analysis that the employment rate has a positive linear relation with the mean or third quartile, while the rate has a negative linear relation with the whisker+ or Q3 box, for the ocean-related departments possibly because these departments have higher regular employment rates than those of the other six departments.