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<p>Be very specific with them on their metric. Most schools have 90+% of students employed within 6 months of graduation, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. A student who graduates without a job is a lot more desperate than one still in school and will take a low paying or lower qualification position just to be employed.</p>
<p>What you care about is the percentage employed before graduation. That gives you a good perspective on how many people recruit there and how well the Career Services department works.</p>
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<p>I absolutely agree. One thing I’ve seen very clearly during this downturn is that the school makes a huge difference. Your first tier engineering schools still had plenty of hiring whereas the second and third tier schools were starved for recruiters.</p>
<p>The point of my previous post was to make the case that you see different people at top schools vs. other schools. Want to go into VC? You have virtually no chance at Lehigh. Want to go into Management Consulting? You have virtually no chance at Miami. And even within industries it varies. In addition to salary (as you mentioned), higher tier students usually get the first pick of location (New York instead of North Dakota), and roles (R&D at Phantom Works instead of quality control in a plant).</p>