First of all, notice that none of this contradicts my comment. A prestigious school brand will help you to get into the hiring process. I did hear that for cer

First of all, notice that none of this contradicts my comment. A prestigious school brand will help you to get into the hiring process. I did hear that for certain roles in certain companies, such prestigious brand is effectively a requirement to enter the process. This is rare in software engineering, because there's so much demand, that even the top tier employers can't limit themselves to top school graduates, not if they want to fill up all openings. The other reason is that these top schools churn out a lot of legacy graduates - people who got in and graduated because their parents attended the school and/or donated money. That means there's a lot of top school graduates who aren't that bright, and many of the brightest people who went to less prestigious schools.