<p>Is there some ranking or research on how employers see a school? Frankly, that should be more important than the school’s reputation from our point of view (as teens and parents).</p>
<p>For example, a school like UFlorida. It’s ranked pretty well by US News, it has nice SAT scores, good GPAs. But when I think of UF, the first things I think of are athletics and partying. That really doesn’t help in any job. I’d like to see something like Glassdoor, but for colleges (where hiring people can write their views).</p>
<p>Large size makes a school more attractive to recruiters, since one visit can get exposure to more students (yes, even the non-top “average” students at big state universities are often worth recruiting to many employers). Since Arizona has only three public universities, of which ASU is the largest, ASU likely does have a decent size subset of students who are among the top students in ability and motivation but did not get in (with enough financial aid) anywhere “better”.</p>
<p>Sure you can make a recruiting visit to Caltech, but if there are only 10 students in the major you are recruiting for and 9 of them are going on to PhD programs, that is a rather low yield recruiting strategy if you need dozens of good people from the major (and even if you want an elite student, you may still find them at the big state universities).</p>
<p>" How come schools like ASU, which has fewer ranked disciplines, are overall ahead of schools like Michigan where many disciplines are ranked? "</p>
<p>companies have a formula or connection for one reason or another, they are not looking at us news or think the ivies are anything more impressive then texas a and m or schools like that! they need good people , they see right threw smoke and mirrors.</p>
This. This is why this particular ranking skews heavily towards schools like Penn State / Texas A&M.</p>
<p>I’m no fan of Harvard, but no employer in their right mind thinks more highly of the abilities of your average Penn State grad vs. a Harvard grad.</p>
<p>^Again, there are a lot of things to dislike about Harvard’s undergrad education, but the article says nothing and gives no reasons as to how ASU English grads are better than Harvard English grads. It merely deals with recruiters’ opinions about these schools and the students there. </p>
<p>However, as people have pointed out, this is skewed by the fact that recruiters will obviously favor a school like ASU where they can hire 100 people in one visit, whereas at a smaller school like Harvard, they will hire maybe 5 people (due to the smaller size, and the idea that people will get multiple offers). This ranking ignores the fact that grads at top schools will disproportionately enter a small handful of “elite” destinations like Google, Facebook, other tech firms, law school, Teach for America, consulting firms, and finance firms, whereas other grads will typically enter a whole wide range of destinations.</p>
<p>Investment banking and high end management consulting are the two areas of bachelor’s degree work that most strongly favor recruiting at “elite” colleges.</p>
<p>But many other types of employers would rather spend their recruiting effort looking for a large number of good graduates instead of a few “elite” graduates (and a few “elite” graduates are still likely to be among those graduating from the big state universities).</p>
<p>I also think it has to do with yield as well, even at the larger state schools. Many students at schools like UCLA/Berkeley are pre-professional types and go on to grad./professional school. Most of the elite public schools do poorly, although Michigan does surprisingly well…</p>
<p>Many entry-level jobs out there are not all that challenging, if not boring. You really don’t need the smartest people from elite schools to do “quality” work because it doesn’t take that much to produce it. At the same time, it’s more difficult to retain grads from elite schools cos they get bored faster. Recruiters are wary of students that are too smart for their own good.</p>
<p>But if you survey only the top investment banks, think tanks, management consulting firms, or companies like Google, you’ll get very different results.</p>
<p>Most would not say it is because they are too smart–maybe too smug and entitled. And most entry level professional jobs are very challenging. Nonsense statement.</p>
<p>The flaw in the WSJ survey is that it doesn’t adjust for school size. An employer might like a massive school with a large pool of applicants but that’s not in the best interest of students. I noticed CMU on the list and they are a much smaller school that the large state schools. You almost want to see recruiters/student or offers/student as a ranking criteria.</p>
<p>The rankings were based on perceived quality of graduates–not quanitity hired other than you needed to have a minimum number to be ranked.</p>
<p>“In all, 479 recruiters completed the survey, a response rate of 57%. Total, those recruiters reported hiring more than 43,000 new grads in the prior year. We asked recruiters to identify, based on their experience, the schools on our list of 100 top colleges and universities whose bachelor degree graduates were the best-trained and educated, and best able to succeed once hired. Companies could also write-in schools not on our list. We also asked recruiters to identify how many new graduates they hired in the prior year—and from which majors—and then to rate which school’s grads were best in each major. Recruiters were asked to name, in rank order, their top schools overall and their top schools by major. Respondents could only rank schools and majors from which they actively recruit.”</p>
<p>The difference in SAT between a lot of these publics on the list and the private elites is more than 200-300 points or more. The ones with less than 1200 will say it’s pretty challenging.</p>