Employers generally hire based on having a good combination of skills/experience required to be successful at specific positions, not based on USNWR ranking or perception of or having the highest percentage of “top academic students”. I’m somewhat familiar with Qualcomm engineering, so I’ll use them as an example. An example entry level position for new college graduates at Qualcomm is described on their website at https://qualcomm.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External/job/San-Diego/Hardware-Engineer---College-Graduate_3001380 . The job posting says they want applicants who have a degree in electrical or computer engineering and have the following skills/experience:
- Hardware Architecture Design (architecture/micro-architecture, ARM, integration, C/C++, systems C)
- Digital ASIC Design (RTL Design, Logic Design, Verilog/VHDL, C/C++, TCL, and Perl)
- Design Verification (UVM/OVM, test benches, System Verilog, C/C++, TCL, and Perl)
- Physical Design (floorplanning, placement and route, STA, and implementation)
- RF/Analog/Mixed-Signal/Power IC Design (buck boost, DC-DC, voltage, PLL, LNA, OpAmp, mixer, DAC/ADC, VCO, antenna)
If Qualcomm wants to find quality employees for this positions, would their best bet be to go by USNWR national ranking and recruit at colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Chicago who are all relatively weak in EE and have relatively few EE grads? Or might they have far better results at a far lower recruiting/travel cost if they recruit at UCSD, which emphasizes Qualcomm tech in their EE classes more than most (perhaps all) other colleges including much of the above desired skills, has a long history of successful hires at Qualcomm, is located practically within walking distance of Qualcomm SD, and has a large number of EE graduates who are enthusiastic about living & working in the SD region?
Rather than attending a specific college, the most preferred job applicants are likely ones who have successful work experience doing something similar to the job description, preferably involving past work at Qualcomm, such as an internship. If Qualcomm knows the applicant has been successful doing something similar in a past internship, they can also be confident the applicant will be successful working full time. According to LinkedIn the colleges with the largest number of Qualcomm engineering interns were as follows, which suggests UCSD should do well in this metric as well.
Most Engineering Interns at Qualcomm’s Main Campus in SD
1 . UCSD
2. SDSU
3. USC
4. University of Mumbai
5. UCLA
If you mean only IB/MC preferred colleges and not any of the many other fields of employment, then I think there is a correlation with USNWR ranking for certain types of positions. However, this does not mean one is causing the other. For example, I suspect there is an even higher correlation with hunt’s prestigiosity rankings at Ranking Colleges by Prestigiosity than USNWR rankings. However, this does not mean IB/MC are basing their recruiting on hunt’s list from the linked post.
This also is a gross oversimplification of IB/MC hiring. Many excellent IB/MC companies also have hires and recruiting from colleges that are not ranked top USNWR, and some of such colleges have a good portion of grads entering related fields. They also hire for a variety of different types of positions, including things like engineering heavy positions, which have a very different list of favored colleges for recruiting.