Another Ranking: The 25 Top Colleges According to Hiring Managers

Parents Forum
1

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hiring-managers-25-best-schools-161911937.html

Looks like a lot of the usual suspects:

  1. Harvard University
  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  3. Stanford University
  4. Yale University
  5. Princeton University
  6. Duke University
  7. Columbia University
  8. University of Pennsylvania
  9. Dartmouth College
  10. University of California at Berkeley
  11. TIE: California Institute of Technology
  12. TIE: Cornell University
  13. University of Chicago
  14. US Naval Academy
  15. Northwestern University
  16. Georgetown University
  17. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
  18. University of Virginia
  19. Johns Hopkins University
  20. US Military Academy
  21. Carnegie Mellon University
  22. Brown University
  23. New York University
  24. University of Notre Dame
  25. Boston College
2

Seems a lot like the tiers I came up with (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1682986-ivy-equivalents-p3.html) minus the smaller schools.

3

And they stacked the results of the survey. They used Business Insider readers for responses and:

http://www.businessinsider.com/best-colleges-in-america-methodology-2015-2015-8

We have this totally different set of results from a previous survey:
http://www.collegeatlas.org/recruiters-college-picks.html

Conclusion - surveys can say whatever you want.

4

I’m beginning to think surveys exist to keep traffic high on CC :wink:

5

Yawn, another raking.

6

I think they should do something to break the ties. Maybe a tug-o-war?

7

Which hiring managers?

Which companies/organizations?

Which positions hired for?

Which specific expectations as to work experience/grades/etc.?

Pure click-bait again at Yahoo.

8

Yes, “usual suspects” indeed. Let’s see:

• Top 5 are HYPSM but in slightly jumbled order (HMSYP)

• 7 Ivies are in the top 11; #22 Brown (6 spots below its USNews ranking) is the lone Ivy not in that exalted group

• Midwestern schools generally fare worse here than in US News: Northwestern 2 spots lower than its US News ranking, Chicago 9 spots lower, Notre Dame 8 spots lower, WUSTL not in top 25 here despite ranking #14 in US News, so at least 12 spots lower. Big exception: Michigan, which ranks 12 spots higher here than in US News

• With the exception of Duke (2 spots higher here than US News), Southern schools don’t make the top 25, including Vanderbilt, Rice, and Emory, ranked #16, #19, and #21 respectively in US News

• Top publics do better here: Virginia +5, Michigan +12, UC Berkeley +10 over their respective US News rankings. But UCLA (#23 in US News) doesn’t make this top 25.

I’m glad to see some love for the top publics, but it makes you wonder whether this survey is anything more than a name recognition test. Or perhaps a name recognition test among people in the Northeast. Brown (-6 from its US News ranking) is arguably the least “famous” of the Ivies. Johns Hopkins (-7 from its US News ranking) is another quality school that doesn’t have the same breadth of name recognition as some other schools on this list. Midwestern and Southern schools seem to be somewhat or mostly “out of sight, out of mind.” Meanwhile, 17 of the top 25 schools on this list are in the Northeast (taking the liberty to extend the Northeast as far south as Charlottesville), making this list even more Northeast-centric than US News (12 of top 25 in the Northeast). And that doesn’t even include schools like Duke which draws its student body heavily from the Northeast, or Michigan which, while still (just barely) majority in-state, draws a substantial fraction of its student body from the Northeast.

I’d be interested to see someone do a real study, or series of studies, on hiring patterns. E.g., do a more careful and in-depth survey among a scientifically selected sample of hiring managers of various kinds and sizes of firms, rather than the seat-of-the-pants, non-scientific surveys of self-selected participants that these magazines do. Or, go beyond what hiring partners say they do and study what they actually do, i.e., who gets hired where, from what colleges and universities. That type of information could be really valuable. A child’s college education has become a huge investment for many families. It’s unfortunate that so much of that decision is often based on dubious rankings and “surveys,” and, sorry to say it, but often uninformed and unsubstantiated gossip and opinion on forums like CC.

9

@bclintonk, no need to overanalyze it.

Whether they intended to or not, they essentially came up with the ranking the Street would come up with (with small weights towards high tech and consulting). WashU, Vandy, Emory, and (especially) Rice, while all fine universities, aren’t exactly well represented on the Street. Brown, while a Street target like all the other Ivies, probably has the smallest representation on the Street of all Ivies. JHU isn’t exactly overrepresented on the Street either. Meanwhile, both Duke and Dartmouth send a relatively high percentage of grads to the Street and do well in this ranking.

In any case, why are you using USNews as a baseline? We know that some schools game the USNews rankings more heavily than others. If you look at alumni achievements as I do, you’ll see that UChicago (and Columbia), while well within the range of the non-HYPSM Ivies/equivalents, aren’t really close to HYPSM (as USNews has them). And while Rice is on the borderline between Ivy-equivalent and Near-Ivy by my metric, JHU is a Near-Ivy while WashU, Vandy, and Emory aren’t even Near-Ivies if you look at alumni achievements. Among publics, Cal is in the Ivy tier (along the bottom), UMich is a Near-Ivy, UVa is barely a Near-Ivy, and UCLA doesn’t make the cut.

My tiers based off of alumni achievements correspond to this ranking better than either do to the USNews rankings.

10

How do you define achievement?

Rice might have more “achievers” than JHU, but JHU outranks Rice in most grad school programs, and you know there is quality overlap with undergrads who are in those majors.

Maybe the “high achiever” metric just means Rice has more entrepreneur/manager types – assuming that’s the type of achievement you are counting.

11

@prezbucky, I state what metrics I use in my link above.
Specifically, they are

  1. Rate at entering elite med/law/b-schools.
  2. American Leaders as Forbes defines them (they are leaders in business, government, arts, media, and the sciences).
    Those have the most stringent criteria.
    Also
  3. PhD rate
  4. Prestigious student awards rate.

And the rankings I use focus exclusively on what undergrad alums of those schools do (not what their grad alums or faculty do).

12

That seems to be a fair way to measure high achievement.

The next thing to look at is: How much of that is the individual – Type A vs. Type B personality, for instance, and other traits that lead to leadership or high performance in academia, the arts, commerce – and how much of it is the education they received? In other words, how much did the college improve and prepare the person?

Regardless, certainly this is another piece of a “comprehensive” rating system. :slight_smile:

13

To be sure, I have a theory that the pre-med heavy schools that attract a ton of kids who are interested in medicine like JHU, WashU, and Emory may be hurt in the American Leaders ranking because so many of their most talented undergrads just become doctors instead of becoming leading lights in various other fields.

14

@prezbucky, that is much harder to discern. I wish you luck on that endeavor. :slight_smile:

15

Haha, yep. Imagine all the research jobs it would create though. Hey – Eureka! That’s how we get new humanities grads into jobs! :wink:

16

"Specifically, they are

  1. Rate at entering elite med/law/b-schools.
  2. American Leaders as Forbes defines them (they are leaders in business, government, arts, media, and the sciences).
    Those have the most stringent criteria.
    Also
  3. PhD rate
  4. Prestigious student awards rate."

Three of your four criteria rely on rates. Thus, this a good ranking system only if large schools and small schools are ranked separately, large vs. large and small vs. small. Otherwise relying so heavily on rates or per capita analyses will heavily bias the outcome in favor of small schools, especially very small school.

You see this same statistical effect every four years in the Olympics. The top medaling country based on rate of medal production is ALWAYS some tiny country. In 2012 it was Granada which won one medal and has a population of only106K. That’s a rate more than 3-fold better than the medal leader, the USA, which brought home 104 medals. Thus one might be fooled by a rate comparison into thinking that Granada is a greater sports nation than is the US. You might even conlude that it’s three times as great as the US. But that would be a very distorted view of the true picture.

17

Here is the WSJ’s ranking of schools favored by job recruiters:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704358904575477643369663352

18

^ we can pay them less because they have student loans out the wazoo

19

Purple Titan, I don’t know how exhaustive was the database you used, but I find the broad categorization and the list in each category fairly representative of the perception that exists with the well inormed parents. US News follows a methodology which is very different and targets the audience which relate very favorably to the size of the undergraduate student body and acceptance rate. I appreciate your efforts to develop a new matrix.

20

Thank you, @Rintu.