Look, I'm from a university you surely don't know. Not in the US, and not even top 500 in the world by most rankings. Lately I had two PhD students: one gradua

Look, I'm from a university you surely don't know. Not in the US, and not even top 500 in the world by most rankings. Lately I had two PhD students: one graduated with 4 papers in undisputably top-tier conferences (plus 2 in close-to-top-tier ones). The other, only with 1. But you know what? The second student was better than the first (IMO, of course). The first got lucky hitting a research topic that proved to work very well and produced many results with relatively little effort once the basic framework was in place. The second explored more diverse research topics, and did exceptionally deep, high-quality research, but got bitten by reviewers (partly because the research had less "flashy" goals, was more niche and harder to understand, partly because of the massive random factors inherent to reviewing). Both found jobs where they are satisfied AFAIK. The second student may not have had the best publication record, but from what I know (from being asked to give references, etc.) they found places where they went beyond mere counting and appreciated the quality of their research when making hiring decisions. Neither university prestige, nor number of papers, are as important (or indicative of real skill) as you think (although of course they help). The world is much more complex than that.