An elite university located on the outskirts of Silicon Valley has proven itself as a pipeline for tech talent.
Silicon Valley hires more alumni from University of California, Berkeley, than any other school, according to a new analysis from online recruiting company HiringSolved.
Berkeley beat out Stanford University (No. 2), Carnegie Mellon (No. 3), and the University of Texas at Austin (No. 5) in becoming the university that sends the most graduates on to careers at Silicon Valley's top 25 tech companies by revenue. Of the top 10 universities, none were Ivy League schools.
The survey, which was reported on by The San Francisco Business Times, used data from more than 10,000 public profiles for tech workers hired or promoted to new positions in 2016 and the first two months of 2017.
Shon Burton, CEO of HiringSolved, said in a statement that tech industry recruiters are looking for a "strong fundamental understanding of the basics of technology," above Ivy League credentials, in their new hires.
"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," Burton said.
Berkeley sits about an hour's drive north of the area where major tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Tesla have headquarters. The university's proximity to Silicon Valley has long attracted aspiring tech workers who hope to intern there or find capital to launch startups. Its career fairs are well attended by top recruiters.
Starting this fall, young entrepreneurs will have an extra reason to attend Berkeley.
A new program at Berkeley wants to launch future tech leaders by teaching the variety of skills required of them in the real world. TheManagement, Entrepreneurship, & Technology (MET) Programwill provide students with dual degrees in business and engineering in four years, in the hopes of giving graduates a command of leadership and technology skills and putting them on an accelerated path to CEO.
The program has already caught the attention of a top investment firm. Kleiner Perkins announced it will give an interview to every incoming MET student for its fellowship, which lets students join its portfolio companies in design and engineering roles for the summer.
"It looks like it is going to be themost elite tech leader factory there is," Michael Grimes, managing director at Morgan Stanley and a founding advisory board member of MET, told Business Insider in April.
Over 2,500 high school seniors applied for the 30 spots in MET, making it more selective than Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, with an acceptance rate of less than 2%.
