The Top 20 Universities With the Most In-Demand Entry-Level Talent, According to Recruiters

Rankings from the 2018-2019 hiring season.

Which colleges and universities produce the most in-demand candidates? According to data from the 2018-2019 hiring season, candidates from Ivy Leagues and elite institutions (public and private) remain the most popular with university recruiters on our platform.

We looked at the composite data of the university recruiters that used our platform over the past year and found that students from certain universities were much more likely to to receive a first round interview than students from other universities. A first-round interview may occur after a recruiter is automatically “matched” with a qualified and interested candidate through RippleMatch’s algorithms. After reviewing candidates’ profiles, recruiters that use our platform are able to reject or accept matched candidates into their interview process. Candidates that were most often accepted into a company’s interview process typically attend highly-ranked institutions such as Ivy Leagues or selective state schools.

There are great candidates at a wide range of schools (from women’s colleges to public universities to HBCUs), but candidates from the following schools emerged as the most in-demand from the 2018-2019 hiring cycle. Read on for the full list:

1. Harvard University – 70% of Harvard Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: Cambridge, MA

Undergraduate Enrollment: 6,766

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 4.59%

2019 US News Ranking: #2

2. Stanford University – 68% of Stanford Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: Stanford, CA

Undergraduate Enrollment: 7,062

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 4% (Stanford University has since announced it will no longer publicize its acceptance rate)

2019 US News Ranking: #7

2. University of Virginia – 68% of UVA Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: Charlottesville, VA

Undergraduate Enrollment: 16,655

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 29.8%

2019 US News Ranking: #25

4. University of Pennsylvania – 67% of UPenn Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Undergraduate Enrollment: 10,033

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 8.4%

2019 US News Ranking: #8

5. Princeton University – 64% of Princeton Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: Princeton, NJ

Undergraduate Enrollment: 5,394

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 5.5%

2019 US News Ranking: #1

5. Georgetown University – 64% of Georgetown Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: Washington, D.C.

Undergraduate Enrollment: 7,463

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 14.5%

2019 US News Ranking: #22

5. Washington University in St. Louis – 64% of Wash U Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: St. Louis, MO

Undergraduate Enrollment: 7,675

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 14%

2019 US News Ranking: #19

5. Columbia University – 64% of Columbia University Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

 

Location: New York, NY

Undergraduate Enrollment: 6,162

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 5.5%

2019 US News Ranking: #3

9. Northwestern University – 63% of Northwestern Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

Location: Evanston, IL

Undergraduate Enrollment: 8,278

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 8.4%

2019 US News Ranking: #10

10. Cornell University – 62% of Cornell Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

 

Location: Ithaca, NY

Undergraduate Enrollment: 14,907

Admissions Acceptance Rate: 10%

2019 US News Ranking: #16

From Harvard University to Cornell University, these are the top 10 universities for entry-level talent in the 2018-2019 hiring season, according to our data collected from the recruiters that use our platform. The list below rounds out the top 20 universities for entry-level talent.

11. University of Notre Dame – 61% of Notre Dame Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

11. Duke University – 61% of Duke Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

11. Binghamton University – 61% of Binghamton Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

11. University of California, Los Angeles – 61% of UCLA Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

15. New York University – 60% of NYU Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

15. University of California, Berkeley – 60% of UC Berkeley Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

17. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – 58% of UMichigan Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

17. Yale University – 58% of Yale Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

19. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign – 57% of University of Illinois Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

20. Massachusetts Institute of Technology – 56% of MIT Candidates Accepted by Recruiters

This post has been updated to reflect our data from the full 2018-2019 hiring season.

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