mordant wit

When they envision their dream jobs, most M.B.A. students don't get all starry-eyed and idealistic.

Instead, they take a very pragmatic view and set their sights on the companies that happen to be paying the most and hiring the most. That attitude is apparent in the results of a new survey that asked M.B.A.s to name their "ideal" employers. In the annual study, students awarded higher popularity scores this year to nearly all of the management-consulting and financial-services companies, many of which have flocked back to campus with more jobs and fatter paychecks.

While they have traditionally been magnets for M.B.A.s, banks and consultants became scarce on campus during the bleak job market of the past few years, and some dropped in the ranking produced by Universum Communications, a research and consulting firm that surveyed more than 4,700 M.B.A.s at 50 U.S. schools.