Is Rice not represented because of its small size? Does it simply look at # of hires? I haven’t looked at the data- am wondering.
This argument about whose alumni list of Silicon Valley employees is bigger is silly. Size matters. When such a list is adjusted for enrollment, schools like Cal Tech and Harvey Mudd jump into the top ten. And so does Rice at #9.
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And I mentioned the survey’s flaw. 
From your link:
“across eleven of the most reputable American tech companies, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Adobe, Airbnb, and Lyft.”
So that’s this survey’s flaw. Silicon Valley consists of MORE than just these 11 companies. A lot more.
Anyone or relevance knows Rice.
As much as I’d want to talk Cornell up, I don’t think Rice is any worse reputation-wise.
And as much as I personally enjoyed my Cornell experience, I think Rice experience
would be less polarizing.
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I never look at those surveys because you never really know what the kids wound up doing otherwise. Are they not in SV because they’re in grad school? Working elsewhere? Etc? Many Cornell grads don’t want to go out West and stay in NYC. As you know, SV isn’t the be all to end all, but many people measure how good a school is by how many people take jobs in SV which irrelevant because no one knows if they aren’t there because they chose not to be or because they couldn’t get a job out there.
True … in my years MSFT, SUN, Borland, Oracle were the cream of the crop … and none of my peers actually wanted to work for them. Smaller, cooler, techier was the name of the game … but then again … I think my CS class was like 80 ppl 
Haha look how it’s changed. My daughter had to take a CS class in Bailey Hall because it didn’t fit anywhere else. So…you know how big that class was.
LOL “CS Theatre” ala Psych 101
Exactly, there are a ton of college graduates that prefer NOT to work for those older more established companies.
Yes, you posted that you were aware of the survey’s flaws, but in spite of that, you went on to emphasize that Rice wasn’t in the top 25 of the flawed survey - as though that is significant.
I don’t want to nitpick over how each survey is flawed. I posted an alternate survey as an example. The point is that size matters. Rice is very small as research universities go. Barely 4000 students. So of course they’re not going to have the same number of hires as behemoths like Berkeley, Illinois, or Penn State.
Furthermore, Rice is located in Texas and almost 40% of their students are from Texas. Many self-select out of CV. Hiring numbers don’t reflect only who CV wants but also who wants to go there. There are other places where CS degree holders can get jobs. The whole approach of evaluating a college’s CS program by the number of alums in SV has major flaws from the get go.
Operations Research is mostly about optimization (of systems, processes, etc.) and has tradtional applications in industries. However, these days most students in OR are focused on the financial engineering aspect of it. They aim to work on Wall Street upon graduation.
I said Rice wasn’t in the Top 25. I never said it was significant or not. You’re assuming what my intent with posting that survey, where there was none. So, you’re wrong there.
And you even called the “argument” silly. One, I wasn’t making an argument, I was just posting info that I’m aware of. Two, I don’t appreciate when people call someone else’s “arguments” “silly.” That’s rude. And likely wouldn’t happen in a face-to-face discussion, at least with me 
. Three, the survey points out a truism, that one can get a degree from a “lowly” state school and still be eminently employable in tech.
As I mention above, the survey you linked lists ONLY 11 companies that a lot tech graduates would prefer to avoid at all costs, legacy companies, not tech start ups. And not even one bio tech company, as one example of what’s missing in that survey. Your survey is limited to 11 companies, a really small sample size, when there are thousands and thousands of tech companies in Silicon Valley, both big and small.
They’re both flawed surveys. And I mentioned that. So let’s move along. You can PM me, but I prefer you don’t.
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You have the Financial Engineering aspect right! She also says Fintech. She does not want to work on Wall Street though! But thank you for that explanation. I was a Finance major and I took a class called Operations Research that was a Management class. We also called it Quantitative Methods. She said she likes ORIE because it’s mathy (her strength) and is finding the CS stuff just so boring the more she gets into it. But I find it interesting now that ORIE is in Engineering there when for me it was in Business. But trying to explain it to 80 year old parents, smh.
But the size of the alumni base would definitely help someone looking for a role at those companies. It be easier to network with more alums at a company and across industries. I cant speak for PSU but I factually know that grads of UM and GT (two more behemoths), Berkeley, Purdue and UIUC all recruit at their alma maters, pre-covid, since many of them were hiring managers, they could make trips out there or have recruiters get resumes from those schools.
“However, these days most students in OR are focused on the financial engineering aspect of it. They aim to work on Wall Street upon graduation.”
OR grads also tend to shoot for consulting roles out of undergrad, but that’s been around for a while so could be a little easier to explain to parents! IE is very new, so your daughter may have to explain a little to recruiters what it is, relative to CS and how it works with CS, which is a known field. When I graduated in the mid 80’s, computer engineering was new, so us CEs had to explain what it was relative to EE, which was what they knew.
These general statements that anyone of relevance knows any university stretches credulity. All you can say even of local places like UCB and Stanford is that most people know them, not some esoteric statement about relevance.
Rice is very tiny so a survey of which schools place the most people in Silicon Valley is misleading. I don’t see Caltech or Harvey Mudd on the survey, but I doubt people would suggest it’s because those CS programs are no good.
I’m one of those that says both Cornell and Rice will serve a student equally well for CS.
Edit: I posted this after reading sushirittos initial comment about the survey. I hadn’t noticed that several others also took him/her to task for the same thing.
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OMG the article was informational. I never said Rice was a bad school.
I disclosed the flaw of the article. Someone pointed out the flaw that I already disclosed. And now you’re agreeing with that the article has a flaw. So does a survey of only 11 legacy tech companies.
Geezus. Move on already.
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I like to rub it in.
My H did his undergrad at Cornell in ORIE (he did the 5 year program so also has his MBA from Johnson). It’s been a highly marketable degree.
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Easy to do on the Internet.
(I have a M.Eng in it)
It’s what they used to call Data Science back in the day.
Highly Marketable.
(but I do prefer hiring CS majors)