I imagine people who fit the description of "dumb guy who fluked his way through MIT math programme with a high GPA" are a pretty endangered species. Maybe. B

I imagine people who fit the description of "dumb guy who fluked his way through MIT math programme with a high GPA" are a pretty endangered species. Maybe. But people who fit the description of "smart guy who got through MIT math programme with a high GPA but is clueless about the fundamentals of software engineering and aggressively unwilling to learn"? Probably not so endangered. Besides remember you're competing with other employers, and on average employers currently overvalue paper qualifications. Once you take that into account it's probably rational to place negative weight on them: other things equal, the guy who didn't go to college has a better chance of being good than the MIT graduate, because MIT graduates who were good, have probably already been snapped up.