Amanda Giordano, 21, got a job offer during the exit interview last week near the end of her summer internship in the Center City office of accounting house PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Now, the Villanova University accounting major joins a lucky cadre of seniors returning to college in the midst of a lackluster economy with job offers from the companies that employed them as interns this summer.

In general, college hiring is off dramatically in the last two years. While statistics for this year's crop of graduates was not available, the job-hunting Web site CollegeGrad.com said only 52 percent of 2002 graduates had jobs when they left college - down from 65 percent the year before.

And the National Association of Colleges and Employers says surveys of employers showed hiring of college graduates fell 33.6 percent between the spring of 2001 and 2002, and was expected to be unchanged this year.

Yet, even in a time of layoffs and hiring freezes, many companies continue to use internship programs as prime recruiting tools -- though such programs may have fewer openings than in the past, experts said.

"The goal when we bring them in is that everyone gets an offer," said Linda York, regional recruiter at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Among major accounting firms, it is "an industry standard" to offer jobs to summer interns in August, said Kirsten Lohrbach, director of campus recruiting at the Philadelphia office of Ernst & Young. She said 19 of its 20 interns would be offered jobs by tomorrow.

After a summer internship testing software at the Vanguard Group headquarters in Malvern, Sambath Meas is returning to Temple University for his senior year with a full-time job offer in his pocket.

"I would have been more surprised if I didn't" get the offer, Meas, 22, of South Philadelphia, said. "I think I've been doing a good job."

Of about 100 summer interns at Vanguard, "we intend to make offers to probably 90 percent of the rising seniors," said Mike Guglielmo, the Vanguard principal in charge of employment. "And our offer-acceptance rate has been running 80-plus-percent for the last two years."

Meas, who majors in both accounting and computer science at Temple, said he would take the fall to consider whether he would accept the Vanguard job. "I have until November," he said.

The internship was his first, Meas said. He had spent other summers taking classes. But, "this year, a lot of people who graduated said they regret not doing internships because some of them don't even have jobs right now," he said.

"So, I thought I should get [an internship], and, thankfully, I got one."

Of course, early job offers do not always survive until the cap and gown comes off. Companies that hit hard times have been known to rescind or postpone offers. And students who got offers from accounting giant Arthur Andersen L.L.P. two summers ago spent their senior year watching that company disintegrate in the Enron Corp. scandal.

But more often, internships are a "win-win for everyone involved," said Camille Luckenbaugh, employment information manager at the National Association of Colleges and Employers. "They're very popular, and definitely something that college students want to do, and that employers encourage."

Luckenbaugh said employers rate internships and longer-term co-operative education programs, called co-ops, as the most effective recruiting methods. "It's definitely the place where many employers are going to turn," she said.

On average, Luckenbaugh said, employers eventually hire 32 percent of recent interns, and 33 percent of co-op students - percentages that have not changed with the lagging economy, she said.

Bonnie Vance, 22, of Washington Township, is a Drexel University senior accounting major who is also working full-time at the Philadelphia offices of the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C.

Vance finished her third six-month co-op term at Glaxo earlier this year, and was offered the full-time job and a 100 percent tuition reimbursement. She took it, and goes to classes around her work schedule.

"At the time, I was under the impression there were no job promises for me," Vance said. "I guess it's really a little bit of hard work and a little bit of luck."

Glaxo and several other pharmaceutical companies with local operations said that, while they do make job offers to some of the hundreds of summer interns they employ, those offers usually are not made before the start of an intern's senior year.

For example, AstraZeneca P.L.C. had 130 interns this summer in Wilmington, the U.S. headquarters of the London-based drugmaker. "If we have an intern who does an excellent job, we may ask the person to stay on in the fall, on a part-time basis," said public affairs spokeswoman Kellie Rivest, herself a former intern. "So when you graduate, you still have a presence, and are able to be a preferred candidate when something becomes available."

Students returning to campus with job offers are more likely to continue looking for additional offers when the economy is roaring, Patricia Rose, career services director at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

"In a bad economy, they're more likely to say, 'I'm going to take it and enjoy my senior year,' because looking for work is like an extra course," Rose said.

Will Giordano take the job at PricewaterhouseCoopers? "I don't know if I should say," the astute Villanova student demurred. "That doesn't leave me much room for negotiation over the coming months."

-- Reid Kanaley. Inquirer staff writer Linda Loyd contributed to this article.