Sam Lee

barrons,

Until you have the actual list of the firms and their respective ratings, I wouldn't be so sure.

The second link you posted mentioned "health care" which could include hospitals that employ nurses or it could include firms that recruit certain number of other health-related majors such as nutrition or health sciences that private schools don't offer. It may then be lumped into business/economics. How do you know "finance" doesn't include insurance (mentioned in the second link you posted), a field that public schools offers but privates don't? How do you know business/economics doesn't include retailing? Also, a lot of times, "finance" and "accounting" are used interchangeably. "Financial analysts" in corporates are often accountants and list understanding of GAAP as one of the requirements.

barrons

If you read the methodology they are not including doctors/nurses--just people that run healthcare companies. I believe the same would apply to retail. Lots of people work at Target HQ and they hire many business and financial analysts--not floor people. Certainly there are some overlaps in job titles etc but in a large survey you still get a good picture--better than the US News rankings.

terenc

Look, none of this changes the fact that graduates from Ivies/top tier universities are drawn to a small handful of "elite" destinations. Of course you will see these recruiters rank students from here more highly - recruiters will simply encounter and be exposed to more large state school grads at your average F500 firm, whereas they will encounter fewer Ivy grads in entry level F500 job.

Even if the 2 Harvard grads in a F500 entry level job that a recruiter meets are great workers and are absolutely brilliant and creative, I'd wager that if a firm had 50 grads from ASU, 40 of whom were good workers and 10 of whom were really bad, the recruiter would probably rank ASU students higher simply because they know more good workers from ASU than they know from Harvard, regardless of what the proportions might actually say.

The only places were a recruiter might meet lots of Ivy League grads at work is where there really is a preponderance of Ivy grads: high tech, finance, consulting, and other destinations like Teach for America.

Fun fact: at Brown after graduation, 22% of students go to grad school (not necessarily PhDs), 11% volunteer / travel / do fellowships. The rest go to work: the top employer by far is Teach for America, followed by Google, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft. This is not the makeup of Penn State / ASU grads.

Furthermore, any ranking that places Purdue, Virginia Polytechnic, and the University of Maryland above MIT in the engineering category is worthless.

If you rely on these rankings, then if you want to go into business and if you are admitted to both OSU and Harvard full-ride, then you ought to choose OSU because that will maximize your job opportunities, right? *sarcasm*

barrons

I'd wager that has nothing to do with any facts presented. Your sarcasm is why many firms do not want those type of grads. Smug and elitist. Does not work in most companies. BTW TFA, Google, Microsoft hire plenty of major state U grads too.

Bill Gates surprises students as "stand in" professor (Oct. 12, 2005)

Teach For America Announces the Schools Contributing the Most Graduates to its 2011 Teaching Corps | Teach For America

Press Release - Teach For America Announces the Schools Contributing the Most Graduates to Its 2010 Teaching Corps

terenc

That's quite funny, because I don't attend an Ivy League institution, nor do I attend a private university, yet you have leaped to the conclusion that I must necessarily attend one because of any perceived smugness and alleged elitism in my attitude - a crass over-generalization if any ever existed, and one that really does not help your arguments.

The fact that you assumed I go to an Ivy League institution simply because you believed I had a smug or elitist attitude only reveals the irrational bias against Ivy League schools that underlies your arguments.

Pizzagirl

I think half of you people are missing the fact that when an employer recruits at colleges A, B, C and D (and not E, F, and G) - they aren't saying that they believe A, B, C, and D are necessarily "superior" to E, F and G or that equally great students couldn't be found at E, F, and G. They're just saying that they need to pick a certain number of campuses because they can't interview everywhere and they need to have some sort of criteria. And "it's nearby and I don't have to pay for relocation costs" and "the graduates have done well so far" are as good as any.

And really, no one cares or should care "what i-banks and management consultants do" other than those students who want to be i-bankers and management consultants. It's irrelevant to the vast majority of college seniors seeking jobs, and those firms / industries don't have some special "this is a good college" blessing to bestow where they go. They are just 2 of many industries.

Pizzagirl

To the extent that Ivies or other top tier schools funnel students into a tighter and tighter band of certain destinations, the worse it reflects on those schools and the more boring and uniform they become. I personally find it interesting when I get my alum newsletter and see all the different things people have become / are doing. I can't imagine anything more boring than reading updates only about a handful of fields, and I would be very disappointed if my alma mater devolved into that.