Top Feeders to Tech and Silicon Valley
Updated July 2021
Many young coders, programmers, and designers dream of one day being welcomed into an elite Silicon Valley company where the future of the world’s technology is conceived and developed. In addition to being at the heart of American innovation, those who land jobs at prestigious tech firms enjoy high salaries and countless workplace amenities like, for example, Google’s famed free food, climbing walls, and lavish parties. In order to maximize your chances of personally enjoying these types of perks, you will want to consider undergraduate institutions that have direct pipelines to the premier companies within the technology sector.
To identify “top feeders” in the tech world, we relied on publicly available data from LinkedIn, a professional networking site featuring profiles of approximately 170 million workers across the United States. Specifically, we identified and analyzed the undergraduate backgrounds of more than 44,000 entry-level engineering and information technology employees across fifteen of the most reputable American tech companies, including Adobe, AirBnB, Apple, DocuSign, Github, Google, HubSpot, LinkedIn, Lyft, Microsoft, Netflix, NVIDIA, SalesForce, Slack, and Twitter . We then constructed two lists. The first list looks at the raw number of alumni employed by this select group. The second list looks at the top 30 producers when adjusted for undergraduate enrollment, which allows us to highlight schools that may be smaller in size, but that still send a significant number of graduates directly to these prestigious companies.
Finally, we identified two top employers for each institution. The first top employer is the tech company employing the most undergraduate alumni from a particular school. The second top employer is the tech company with the highest share of employees from that undergraduate school. For example, Carnegie Mellon's first top employer is Google, because more CMU (undergraduate) alumni work at Google than at any of the other ten tech companies. Carnegie Mellon's second top employer is LinkedIn because its graduates comprise a larger share of all employees at LinkedIn than they do at any other company in our analysis. If a school's second top employer and first top employer are the same, we indicate the tech company with the second highest share of employees instead. Measuring both total graduates employed and the institutional share of a company’s employees allows us to identify schools offering the best pipelines to smaller yet highly prestigious tech firms, such as LinkedIn and Adobe, which may draw heavily from one particular institution but wouldn't otherwise make an institution's list of top employers because of their relatively small size.
Top Feeder Rankings (by total employed)
| Rank (Total) | Institution | # Employed | Top Employer (Total) | Top Employer (Share) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carnegie Mellon University | 1,224 | Airbnb | |
| 2 | University of California, Berkeley | 1,003 | Lyft | |
| 3 | University of Southern California | 964 | ||
| 4 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 894 | Microsoft | HubSpot |
| 5 | University of Washington | 752 | Microsoft | DocuSign |
| 6 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 650 | ||
| 7 | Stanford University | 634 | Slack | |
| 8 | University of Waterloo | 610 | Slack | |
| 9 | University of California, San Diego | 600 | Lyft | |
| 10 | University of California, Los Angeles | 577 | ||
| 11 | University of Michigan | 512 | Lyft | |
| 12 | Columbia University | 507 | Airbnb | |
| 13 | Cornell University | 491 | Lyft | |
| 14 | University of Texas at Austin | 457 | Apple | |
| 15 | Northeastern University | 381 | Microsoft | |
| 16 | Purdue University | 369 | Microsoft | Salesforce |
| 17 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 360 | HubSpot | |
| 18 | University of California, Irvine | 328 | ||
| 19 | New York University | 322 | ||
| 20 | University of Toronto | 318 | ||
| 21 | University of Pennsylvania | 306 | Slack | |
| 22 | San Jose State University | 300 | Apple | |
| 23 | University of British Columbia | 248 | Microsoft | Slack |
| 24 | Duke University | 234 | Microsoft | Airbnb |
| 25 | University of Maryland | 229 | Microsoft | Airbnb |
| 26 | University of California, Davis | 215 | Airbnb | |
| 27 | Brown University | 212 | ||
| 28 | Harvard University | 199 | Airbnb | |
| 29 | University of Virginia | 192 | Microsoft | |
| 30 | University of Wisconsin, Madison | 186 |
Top Feeder Rankings (adjusted for undergraduate enrollment)
| Rank (Adusted) | Institution | # Employed | Top Employer (Total) | Top Employer (Share) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carnegie Mellon University | 1,224 | Airbnb | |
| 2 | Stanford University | 634 | Slack | |
| 3 | California Institute of Technology | 82 | Apple | |
| 4 | Harvey Mudd College | 74 | Lyft | |
| 5 | Columbia University | 507 | Airbnb | |
| 6 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 360 | HubSpot | |
| 7 | Georgia Institute of Technology | 894 | Microsoft | HubSpot |
| 8 | University of Southern California | 964 | ||
| 9 | Rice University | 176 | Airbnb | |
| 10 | Duke University | 234 | Microsoft | Airbnb |
| 11 | Princeton University | 179 | Lyft | |
| 12 | University of California, Berkeley | 1,003 | Lyft | |
| 13 | Cornell University | 491 | Lyft | |
| 14 | Brown University | 212 | ||
| 15 | University of Pennsylvania | 306 | Slack | |
| 16 | Harvard University | 199 | Airbnb | |
| 17 | University of Washington | 752 | Microsoft | DocuSign |
| 18 | Santa Clara University | 118 | Airbnb | |
| 19 | Northwestern University | 175 | Lyft | |
| 20 | Northeastern University | 381 | Microsoft | |
| 21 | Swarthmore College | 33 | ||
| 22 | Yale University | 119 | ||
| 23 | University of California, San Diego | 600 | Lyft | |
| 24 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 650 | ||
| 25 | Washington University | 145 | ||
| 26 | Johns Hopkins University | 101 | ||
| 27 | University of California, Los Angeles | 577 | ||
| 28 | University of Waterloo | 610 | Slack | |
| 29 | University of Chicago | 108 | Lyft | |
| 30 | University of Michigan | 512 | Lyft |
Colleges Worth Your Money
2022 Edition
A Guide to What America's Top Schools Can Do for You
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