State-owned enterprises are taking the place of multinational companies on the 2014 "best employers" ranking and are increasingly favored by college students, a survey has found.

Among the top 50 employers selected by the respondents, 26 are SOEs, seven more than in last year's rankings, while multinationals dropped from 19 to 12. The top 50 was rounded out with 12 private enterprises, the same number as last year.

The survey, conducted by Horizon Research Consultancy Group in the spring, polled 2,128 students from universities in seven cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing.

According to the survey, the top 10 employers are: Alibaba Group, China Mobile Communications Corp, Bank of China Limited, Apple Inc, China Telecom, Huawei, Baidu, China National Petroleum Corp, Tencent and the State Grid Corp of China.

It's the first time that China Telecom, Huawei, Tencent and the State Grid Corp of China have been in the top 10. They replaced Microsoft Inc, Google, Lenovo and Procter & Gamble, which were in last year's top 10.