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Silicon Valley Companies Hiring, But Not From Ivy League Schools

Considering shelling out big bucks on an Ivy League education? You may want to reconsider that – at least if you're eyeing a job in Silicon Valley.

The list of top 10 universities big-name Bay Area companies hire from doesn't feature any of the Ivy League universities in the country, according to artifical intelligence company HiringSolved. The analysis was based on 10,000 profiles of tech workers who were hired or promoted into new roles in 2016 as well as January and February 2017, according to the San Francisco Business Times

Leading the list were two local schools: University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University.

The others, however, included well-known engineering schools, such as Georgia Institute of Technology, and large public universities, including San Jose State University, UC San Diego, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, University of Texas at Austin. 

Of the Ivy League schools, Cornell University made it to rank 15.

“Our research suggests that in addition to specific skills and educational backgrounds, Silicon Valley is looking for a strong fundamental understanding of the basics of technology in their new hires” HiringSolved CEO Shon Burton said in a statement. “Often what separates say, a good engineer from a great one, is a knack for understanding the baseline ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ of how things work – the physics of the technology.”

Applicants looking to stand out must demonstrate familiarity with a number of softwares, including Python, C++, Java, Linux and Matlab, the analysis shows. 

Here are the top 10 schools favored in the past year by recruiters at top Silicon Valley companies:

  1. University of California, Berkeley
  2. Stanford University
  3. Carnegie Mellon University
  4. University of Southern California
  5. The University of Texas at Austin
  6. Georgia Institute of Technology
  7. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  8. San Jose State University
  9. University of California, San Diego
  10. Arizona State University
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