<p>This ranking was compiled using data from Forbes' Payscale and THES-QS' Employer Reviews. As expected, Harvard would again perform very excellently - number 1, and shares this rank with their neighbor, MIT, which performed excellently at USNews as well as at THES-QS, a world-wide ranking table. Surprisingly, graduates of some elite privates schools performed poorly. Here's the ranking (in order):</p>
<p>I’ll ask the obvious question: Why is this important? I truly cannot think of a single reason why this list would be of the slightest use to students selecting colleges.</p>
<p>This is, of course, quite aside from the issue of “best” being entirely subjective. Some people would define “best” as those most willing to give back to those around them. Such people would use Teach for America and Peace Corps data to rank schools.</p>
<p>Why would students not want to pick a school that created graduates that employers like? </p>
<p>job placement percentage is also another factor that I would think is important. Big reason a university like CMU and their computer science program appeals to me. Almost 100% job placement and lots of graduates going to good companies.</p>
<p>FWIW, the guy who manages my aquatics center (basically a large swim-based gym) went to Harvard. He is pretty much an idiot, albeit an arrogant idiot.</p>
<p>Harvard has the name, and sure, there are plenty of high-caliber grads. But the name alone does not make one swim, so to speak.</p>
<p>Plus salary does not take into account cost of living. Manhattan is much more expensive than Southern cities like Atlanta or Charlotte, so it skews the results of the data. Most schools are regional in some respect to placing their students.</p>
<p>The methodology of THES-QS Employer review:</p>
<p>*The Employer Review operates in a very similar fashion to the Academic Peer Review in that it is based on a global online survey. Respondents are again sourced through three key channels. Firstly, QS has an extensive corporate database; secondly, the powerful network of partners with which QS cooperates on its events around the world include a range of job sites and media focused on the private sector; and finally, beginning in 2007, participating institutions are invited to submit a list of contacts from companies with whom they work. Most effectively this would be principally comprised of employers that are known to have received graduates from the given institution. Both domestic and international employers can be included, multiple contacts from the same organisation can be included, public and private sector employers can be included. </p>
<p>In 2008 the questions respondents are asked regarding universities inside their own country and outside were separated. These are recombined after the responses are in using methods designed to reduce any response bias by country.*</p>
<p>100 100 HARVARD
100 100 MIT
100 100 STANFORD
100 100 BERKELEY
100 100 YALE
99 99 CORNELL
99 Chicago
99 99 MICHIGAN
99 99 COLUMBIA
98 98 Duke
98 Penn
98 98 UCLA
98 Princeton
97 97 CMU
97 97 Northwestern
96 96 NYU
94 94 Georgetown
93 93 Dartmouth
93 93 Uva
87 87 UNC
84 84 Vanderbilt
83 83 Brown
83 75 Notre Dame
78 75 Johns Hopkins
74 75 Caltech
73 75 USC
67 75 Emory
64 75 Tufts
55 75 Rice
55 75 Washington USL
xx 75 Wake Forest</p>