> This is a contrived example Nope. I know developers who don't even have degrees that you'd be /crazy/ to ignore. On the average you will do pretty well with

> This is a contrived example Nope. I know developers who don't even have degrees that you'd be /crazy/ to ignore. On the average you will do pretty well with your "good school, good grades" strategy. However, I believe you will miss out on the occasional truly extraordinary candidate, the one that was bored with school and quit to do Neat Stuff. But (you may argue) these people are prima-donnas, or easily-distracted flakes, or won't fit in culturally, or they don't bathe. Or something. Look at their track record /outside of school/ and see if they did indeed do anything Really Neat. If not, they were fooling themselves. But if there's evidence to the contrary, you're crazy to ignore it. Frankly, I don't even look at the education history any more. It doesn't tell me anything. I'm far more interested in what projects they've done and their exposure to computer science and software engineering than what dorm they had an opportunity to occupy.