(FORTUNE Magazine) – The dot-coms are dead. Long live the dot-coms! That's the message from more than 2,000 MBA students at 35 schools surveyed by academic consulting firm Universum.

The fifth annual survey finds that MBAs yearn for the informal, team-oriented atmosphere that many startups provide, but they want it at a FORTUNE 500 company. They are no longer as willing to take a gamble at a startup--only 7% say they would, compared with 18% last year. Likewise, the share of respondents who say they want to work in the Internet/e-commerce sector declines from 13% to 8%, making that industry the third most desirable (tied with consumer goods), behind management consulting and investment banking.

It's no surprise, then, that Amazon.com and Yahoo, which both vaulted into the ten most popular places to work last year, have slid into the teens. Consulting firms, led by perennial champ McKinsey, dominate the top ten. Also gaining favor: tech giants Cisco, Intel, and Hewlett-Packard, not to mention such old-economy heavyweights as 3M, GE, and American Express. The news is not all good for the old guard, however. Gap, Merck, and Nike all fall out of the top 50, while beleaguered 3Com plummets more than 100 spots.

The slumping economy certainly hasn't had any effect on MBAs' salary expectations; in fact, almost a third (32%) say they expect to earn base salaries of $100,000 or more, up from 26% last year. Don't they know there's a recession looming?

--Matthew Boyle

The 50 Most Coveted Employers

RANK

2001 2000 Company

1 1 McKinsey & Co.[*] 2 4 Boston Consulting Group [*] 3 7 Cisco Systems [***] 4 3 Goldman Sachs [**] 5 5 Bain & Co. [*] 6 13 Accenture[1][*] 7 8 Booz-Allen & Hamilton [*] 8 12 Intel [***] 9 22 Hewlett-Packard [***] 10 9 Morgan Stanley Dean Witter [**] 11 15 IBM [***] 12 - Deloitte Consulting[2][*] 13 14 Walt Disney 14 11 Dell Computer [***] 15 - AOL Time Warner[3] 16 18 A.T. Kearney [*] 17 6 Yahoo [***] 18 2 Amazon.com [***] 19 45 3M 20 24 GE Capital 21 10 Microsoft [***] 22 21 Merrill Lynch [**] 23 19 JP Morgan [**] 24 44 American Express 25 40 General Electric 26 20 PricewaterhouseCoopers 27 34 BMW 28 35 Credit Suisse First Boston [**] 29 26 Johnson & Johnson 30 29 Procter & Gamble 31 30 Sun Microsystems [***] 32 67 Nortel Networks [***] 33 36 Ford Motor Co. 34 59 Nokia [***] 35 27 Salomon Smith Barney [**] 36 43 Lehman Brothers [**] 37 31 Citigroup 38 23 Coca-Cola 39 62 Kraft 40 17 Lucent Technologies [***] 41 56 Southwest Airlines 42 49 Fidelity Investments 43 50 American Airlines 44 41 Diamond Technology[4][*] 45 69 Oracle [***] 46 75 Motorola [***] 47 64 Bear Stearns [**] 48 51 Pfizer 49 42 Sony 50 57 Nestle

[*]Management consulting [**]Investment banking [***]Technology

[1]Accenture was researched under the name Andersen Consulting. [2]Part of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, which was ranked separately this year. [3]In 2000, AOL ranked No. 109, and Time Warner ranked No. 32. [4]Merged with Cluster Consulting, Nov. 2000; now DiamondCluster International.