Some of Silicon Valley's best and brightest have decided not to immediately venture out into the work force. Instead, they are opting for graduate school.

That applies to many of the latest engineering graduates from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and other local schools. According to several of this year's Berkeley electrical-engineering and computer-science grads and officials at Stanford, more engineering students of the class of 2010 opted to continue on with graduate degrees than in past years.

The trend -- which is largely anecdotal because schools are still gathering data about their most recent graduates -- comes just as Silicon Valley hiring is picking up again after the recession. The situation isn't likely to be permanent, though, because more students tend to stay in school during poor economic cycles and flow back into the work force when the economy picks up.

Indeed, several engineering grads say they chose to stay in school largely because of last year's recession, which caused a fall-off in campus recruiting just as they were deciding what to do post-graduation. Job postings only began increasing this spring, say officials at Stanford, Berkeley and San Jose State University.

Beverly Principal, assistantdirector of employment services at the Stanford Career Development Center, says close to half the members of the university's graduating engineering class typically go on to do a master's degree but estimates that this year, the percentage jumped to around 60%.

'It was the economy' that pushed more students into graduate work, says Ms. Principal. 'And if you have a master's, you're also more marketable.'

At San Jose State, only 33% of this spring's engineering grads reported having secured jobs, down from 53% in spring 2008, says the university. The data are preliminary, officials say, adding they don't yet have data on how many students chose to go on with additional studies.

One engineering major who decided to stay in academia another year is Jerry Zhang. The 22-year-old Berkeley student, who hails from Fremont, says he started his senior year last year by interviewing for jobs at tech companies such as Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp. But while he says he got several jobs offers, he became increasingly drawn to obtaining a master's, he says.

It was harder for his class to find jobs this year than in past years, says Mr. Zhang. He adds that every tech company that he interviewed with was receptive to him doing a master's, with several firms extending their job offers to him to be valid till next year.

Among the companies actively recruiting on local campuses for engineering grads this past year were Microsoft Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Google Inc., say officials at Stanford and Berkeley. At Berkeley, social-networking site Facebook Inc. became an active recruiter in the last two years, says Tom Devlin, director of the career center there. At Stanford, electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc., which went public last month, also was active on campus for the first time this year, says Ms. Principal.