Rice University is included on Forbes’ exclusive list of “New Ivies” which turn out the smartest and most driven graduates “craved by employers of all types.” Citing mounting challenges facing the nation’s traditional Ivy League universities, the influential business magazine surveyed hiring managers to help compile a cohort of 20 “ascendant” universities — 10 public and 10 private — that produce talented graduates who are applauded in the workforce.
Joining Rice on the “private Ivies” list are Boston College, Carnegie Mellon University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, University of Notre Dame, University of Southern California and Vanderbilt University.
“We are delighted to see Rice University recognized as one of America’s producers of great talent. Rice has been a recruiting destination for employers for many years and that is because Rice students are adaptable, curious, bright and are solution oriented,” said Nicole Van Den Heuvel , executive director of the Center for Career Development , Rice’s centralized career services and professional development hub that serves all undergraduate and graduate students and alumni with the exception of MBA students.
To become a contributing member of the workforce and community, she said, Rice students learn through academically challenging classes, projects, residential colleges, leadership roles, extracurricular activities and experiential learning opportunities.
“We know, anecdotally, that Rice students thrive in workplaces because they are motivated learners, team players and problem solvers,” Van Den Heuvel added. “Employers seek diverse talent and skill sets, and Rice students nurture career competencies throughout their time at Rice and post grad.”
For its analysis, the magazine’s researchers disqualified the classic eight Ivies – Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale – as well as Ivy-plus schools including University of Chicago, Duke, MIT and Stanford. They were left with 1,743 colleges of at least 4,000 students.
Using admissions data from 2022, they identified schools with strong standardized test scores and a high proportion of applicants submitting scores, regardless of whether they were mandatory for admission. These criteria aimed to focus on institutions that prioritize objective measures of success.
In addition, they applied a measure of selectivity, considering schools with admission rates below 20% for private institutions and 50% for public universities. Subsequently, they surveyed hiring manager respondents about each of the 32 remaining schools.
Forbes’ list of “public Ivies” includes Binghamton University, Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus, University of Texas-Austin, University of Florida, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Maryland-College Park, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of Virginia-Main Campus and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.