The Emerson Student Advisory Board, formed in August 2000 to facilitate student input on the future of the accounting profession, has just completed its second annual Big Five Campus Recruiting Survey. For a second time, PricewaterhouseCoopers has been named as the overall leader in Big Five campus recruiting.

"We take great pleasure in presenting PricewaterhouseCoopers with this award," says James C. Emerson, founder and president of The Emerson Company. "A firm cannot succeed in campus recruiting without a strong, firm-wide commitment to excellence. Additionally, the consistency of responses from students across the country was particularly impressive for PwC."

As in 2001, the 35 members of the Emerson Student Advisory Board provided the core of the report. However, the 2002 Board asked to do more.

"During our annual meeting in August," says Christopher Ames, Board facilitator, "the Board said that it wanted to leave its mark on the profession and make a serious contribution to the profession's progress at the same time. The Board members decided to take the Recruiting Survey and expand it to include many other student leaders on their campuses. By having more responses, results could be segmented by school for the first time. The organization of hundreds of students across the country, which the project would require, was a lofty goal and we expressed some caution to the Board at the time. However, their intentions were serious, and we are extremely impressed with the report they produced. They made a promise and they delivered."

During the month of February 2002, nearly 500 top accounting, finance, and business students responded to the survey. Using a custom, secure Web interface, these students rated the Big Five firms on an overall basis, as well as on such things as campus and office interviews, recruiting Web sites, and recruiting literature. The
resulting report offers an unprecedented assessment of Big Five recruiting nationwide, and an exclusive campus-by-campus breakdown of the firms' recruiting performance at more than 20 leading universities.

"We are aware of no other organization that has even attempted a college recruiting evaluation project of this scale," says Emerson. "However, it should not be surprising that the Student Advisory Board is the group to make such a historic contribution to the professional services industry. In just two years, the Student Advisory Board has established itself as a thought leader helping to ensure that the accounting profession retains and improves its status as an attractive career. We look forward to working with them as they tackle future challenges."