@IsaacTheFuture The survey I was talking about had three different lists:
-where companies would LIKE to hire from,
-where hires actually come from (that accounts for the numbers effect you are talking about) and
-which schools young professionals thought really had helped them get jobs by having a good reputation.
The info I mentioned came from that first list. Those are the schools people in aerospace would prefer to hire from if possible. The results were different from US News rankings. The third list was even MORE different from US News.
It doesn’t really have too much to do with how many grads they turn out (that’s the second list).
The survey was done by an industry magazine. I think a pretty important one because my dad recognized it & he’s not in aerospace, haha
That’s the kind of thing that people can look for if they dig around.
Also, the NRC publishes really detailed list every few years that take into account student opinions (it’s for grad schools though) http://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-Physics/124754/
So lots of sources are out there. I am the third kid in my family to go to college, the second in engineering and we have gotten pretty good at searching around for other sources besides US News because my parents have to pay private or OOS tuition and there’s a lot of difference in costs with these schools.