Want to recruit the best and the brightest to your CPA firm? Try having logo items made to pass out to MBA students, hold expensive dinners and invite prospective employees to the next big football game as your guest.

These and other tactics are part of the "new wave" of recruiting efforts going on in America's schools, as firms try to compete with the "dot.coms" of the world for market share on campus.

Among the CPA firms making the news in this scenario are Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and who can blame them? They, too, want to capture the attention of the cream of the crop, and sometimes you have to stand up and shout in order to be heard over the competition.

For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers gives away water bottles, Frisbees and snacks at Duke basketball games, but not all of the plays for attention fall into the entertainment category. Ernst & Young recently sponsored the construction of a study room at Columbia University, and teaches workshops on how to interview.