Penn State tops Wall Street Journal’s newest college ranking; Stanford not in top 25

Sept. 14, 2010, 2:01 a.m.

Despite its usual placement at or near the top of college rankings, Stanford University does not produce the best graduates, according to a new rankings list by The Wall Street Journal that debuted Monday.

The list ranks 25 top schools in the nation by their success in producing the best graduates according to academic strength and communication and leadership skills, measured by recent graduates’ hiring experiences. Pennsylvania State University tops the list, followed by Texas A&M at number two and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at number three. Stanford’s cross-bay rival, UC-Berkeley, ranks at number 15, while Stanford’s perennial U.S. News & World Report ranking rivals Harvard, Yale and Princeton also do not appear on the list.

To formulate this list, The Journal interviewed 500 recruiters — whose companies hired 43,000 recent college graduates in the past year — and asked them to choose from more than 100 top colleges and universities they felt produced the best graduates. The survey also features recruiter’s picks according to majors such as engineering, accounting, computer science and more.

Nineteen of the 25 ranked schools were public, indicating, according to The Journal, that recruiters preferred to recruit from state schools rather than Ivy League or private schools. According to the same survey, internships are the top way to increase the likelihood of finding a job after graduation: more than a quarter of the companies who took this survey reported that more than half of their new college graduates had interned with their firm in the past.

— Ivy Nguyen

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