<p>RML,</p>
<p>Several things. First, as I mentioned above, there are many ways to compare undergraduate business schools. I plan to present salary data and will do so shortly. </p>
<p>Second, I understand your concern about SAT scores and there is some merit to your comment. Unfortunately, however, it is the best data point we have about student quality and thus gets lots of attention/weight on CC and in rankings like BW and USNWR. More importantly, I know that many competitive employers use the colleges as a sort of screening process and, like it or not, standardized test scores are an integral part of the admissions process at nearly every elite school in the USA. </p>
<p>In addition to looking for top talent, employers will gravitate to places where they perceive that there is the best talent AND they have a reasonable chance of attracting them. So, you won’t see a lot of folks in the West or Midwest recruiting at U Virginia nor will you see a lot of folks from Wall Street recruiting for NY positions at USC or UC Berkeley. This geographic factor is often forgotten on CC as only a handful of colleges have truly national appeal (probably only Wharton on this list). Furthermore, alumni entrenchment can be a very sizable factor in recruitment, eg, if a boss or top recruiter attended Kelley at U Indiana, then his/her firm is quite likely to recruit there.</p>
<p>Third, I think you overrate the differences in student quality and preparedness coming out of schools like Wash U and USC vs those coming out of MIT Sloan and UC Berkeley. There’s not much difference and often the soft factors like alumni connection will trump the immaterial differences in student quality. If you know any USC grads who are in hiring positions, then you probably know what I mean as my guess is they’d be very likely to favor a USC grad in the interview process.</p>
<p>Fourth, my point above was about the attractiveness of Stanford grads on Wall Street vs U Virginia McIntire. Not UC Berkeley Haas. IMO McIntire grads would be seen every bit as strongly as those from Haas. At that level, the differences are inconsequential and the fact is that there is probably an alumni advantage for McIntire over Haas in NYC.</p>