Wall Street journal - College Rankings: Recruiters Top 25 Picks

dadinator · 09-13-2010, 09:31 AM

The Wall Street Journal did a survey of almost 500 large companies (they hired a total of 43,000 new graduates last year) and complied a ranking of schools from the recruiters point of view.

I am not sure if you need a Wall Street Journal subscription to see the article, but here is the link:

College Rankings - WSJ.com

It makes for interesting reading - state schools came out on top, with Penn State being number 1.

sm74 · 09-13-2010, 09:39 AM

Finally starting to look at measuring Universities on outcomes. I think many LAC's and Ivy's will say we are preparing our students for leadership and graduate schools so I think if you combine the WSJ measure with an analysis of how medical schools, law schools, business schools etc. rank schools on how well prepared their kids are for graduate school, and look at entrance test scores to those schools then I think you would have a much more meaningful ranking than the traditional USNews ranking that doesn't look at outcomes at all.

Brooklynborndad · 09-13-2010, 09:54 AM

before you guys get all excited, read this

"State universities have become the favorite of companies recruiting new hires because their big student populations ..... gives the companies more bang for their recruiting buck."

IE if you can do only one campus recruiting visit, you get a lot more prospective hires at Penn State than you do at Penn, cause of size.

Thats rather different from saying "we would pick a PSU grad over a Penn grad, all other things being equal".

Seriously, state schools are great and all that. I would have MORE respect for the folks advocating for them, if they didn't post misleading things so often.

sm74 · 09-13-2010, 10:16 AM

I'm not sure what is misleading. From what I have seen I think this report is accurate. Employers are not necessarily all clamoring for Dartmouth Sociology majors believe it or not. They are looking for intelligent, hard-working kids with skills applicable to the jobs they have. While I'm not from the mid-west from what I have seen I agree and find it interesting how highly regarded many mid-west schools are.

atomom · 09-13-2010, 10:28 AM

Big, mostly public, schools in high population areas. No-brainer. Lots of grads = lots of people to hire. Lots of large companies in nearby large metro areas = more positions to fill.

(I'm sure that U. of Nebraska grads are very popular in Nebraska. . .)

Brooklynborndad · 09-13-2010, 10:28 AM

#4

that may or may not be true. The article cited is not evidence for it however.

The article only shows that that recruiters going on campus, arent going to bother for a school with a relatively small pool of potential recruits.

as for dartmouth sociology majors, do you see what you did there? you conflated two issues - school, and major.

Are those recruters looking for PSU sociology majors? Or just engineering, business, etc majors at PSU. If you are looking to do sociology, are you better off at PSU or Dartmouth? And if you are looking to do sociology, does it make ANY sense to rely on oncampus recruiting, or should you use the school's network, etc.

For engineers, how does PSU compare to MIT? More companies may go to visit State CollegePA than Cambridge, cause they have a better shot at landing a PSU grad than an MIT grad. Is there any evidence MIT engineering grads do less well in salaries, pct with jobs, etc than PSU engineering grads?

Not to say PSU isnt a great school, if you find it a good fit. And a good deal if you are instate PA. But to avoid the tippy top schools for career reasons is probably generally a poor idea.

Brooklynborndad · 09-13-2010, 10:29 AM

"Employers are not necessarily all clamoring for Dartmouth Sociology majors believe it or not. "

who said they were? Straw man.

Redroses · 09-13-2010, 10:38 AM

No surprise. The truth here is employers hiring for rank and file corporate jobs have historically not had the interest of top college grads who headed for Wall Street, consulting firms and elite corporate groups with separate recruiting. You don't go to Harvard looking to staff your Chicago office.

Brooklynborndad · 09-13-2010, 10:38 AM

look at the recruiter comments on the schools

"x is good, we actually manage to hire from their"

The problem for many recruiters with the tippy top schools

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. "
Yogi Berra

sm74 · 09-13-2010, 10:39 AM

The point of the article I think is a good one where they are taking an initial shot at trying to measure the value of a university education based on outcomes which, again, I think USNews does a very poor job of. This for me was my primary interest-how does the school prepare my child for the job market, or for a graduate school position that will then prepare them for a job.
Honestly, I don't understand why USNews ignores this basic idea. Although, I can remember sitting in a large meeting at our kid's private school where they were discussing college choices and after 2 hours of questions about colleges not one question had been raised about how the college prepared kids for work. All anyone seemed to care about was the "prestige" factor of the school.

Brooklynborndad · 09-13-2010, 10:44 AM

"The point of the article I think is a good one where they are taking an initial shot at trying to measure the value of a university education based on outcomes "

No, thats NOT what they are doing. They are asking recruiters which schools they like to recruit at and why. In many cases that is the exact inverse of outcome (even narrowly defined) for STUDENTS.

Again, look at the comments. "hofstra is good to recruit at, cause those kids already KNOW how expensive NYC is" (and will take our salaries that dont adequately reflect the cost of living here). Recruiters, esp those offering lower salaries, or less prestigious jobs, have a hard time recruiting at the tippy top schools. Ergo, those schools are NOT good places for them to recruit, since sending a a recruiter is costly.

sm74 · 09-13-2010, 10:44 AM

Redroses, I think maybe the reason we have the financial mess we have now is because there are too many Dartmouth Sociology majors on Wall Street-just kidding Dartmouth Sociology majors.

kidloveit · 09-13-2010, 10:44 AM

Why does this list ignore Upenn? It has many job-oriented colleges

sm74 · 09-13-2010, 10:47 AM

Brooklyn where I would agree with you is that many students are not interested in a job or having to do real work.

Brooklynborndad · 09-13-2010, 10:47 AM

"Dartmouth Sociology majors on Wall Street-just kidding Dartmouth Sociology majors. "

actually some of the biggest mess ups on WS were done by folks with less prestigious degrees, cause the Ivy types were going into traditional Ibanking jobs, while the firms were increasingly dominated by traders.

That said, we may still have too many folks in Ibanking. That does not make this article a useful measure of outcomes, however.