<p>I work in Investment Banking.</p>
<p>One of my job functions is a hiring manager for a major aerospace company. FWIW, Florida is the only SEC school that merits key-recruitment status.</p>
<p>^So why don’t you guys recruit at Vandy? </p>
<p>Does it have more to do with geographical convenience/compatibility or is this more of a statement on the quality of Vandy engineering grads?</p>
<p>^ It is not a slam on Vanderbilt that it is not a key recruitment school…we employ many Vandy engineering grads. Presently, there are only 27 schools on our key-school list.</p>
<p>So just out of curiosity, roughly how many of these schools are in Florida/Georgia/Alabama?</p>
<p>by the way, I’m wondering if anyone has anything to say about SEC expansion? Do you think that it will happen? If Clemson gets invited to the SEC, I’d love to join haha</p>
<p>“So just out of curiosity, roughly how many of these schools are in Florida/Georgia/Alabama?”</p>
<p>GaTech is the only other school in the southeast.</p>
<p>What does “key-recruitment status” entail? </p>
<p>Do you only have contacts with the career placement centers at these schools, but still equally consider applicants from all schools? Or, does this status mean you give preferential treatment (whether explicit, such as adding weighting GPAs, or implicit) to students from these schools? Or, it is flat out impossible to get hired by your company as a fresh graduate from a school outside the list?</p>
<p>^ Our motivation for determining key-school status is quite a bit different from what an Investment Banking firm might consider. Yes, the quality of the graduates and the quality of the programs is a fundamental element. But our interest is in developing relationships with certain schools that goes well beyond simple recruitment. We have an extensive on-campus presence at key-schools for simple things like hosting engineering-society dinners all the way up to full-blown sponsorship of fundamental research and participating in things like Formula-SAE and DARPA-challenges. This kind of involvement gives us insight into programs and students that simply cannot be obtained in any other way.</p>
<p>Aside from Key-schools, we also have lists for “target schools” and “diversity and inclusion” schools, but our involvement with those is less extensive. Further, it should be understood that we hire a great many students from schools that are not on any of our school lists.</p>
<p>Oh, okay. I understand what your saying.</p>