Where Do Googlers Go to College? A Look at Tech Companies' Top Feeder Schools.

So the average student at a top school is roughly equal to a top student at an average school?

Probably not, but my hypothesis is that there are people at, say, Fayetteville State, that could have gone to Stanford but never even bothered applying. Maybe they thought they couldn't afford it, maybe they didn't want to move so far from home, who knows. And I also believe there are people who "couldn't get in" to, say, Stanford, who would still have excelled at Stanford had they attended. Some people aren't good high school students for any number of reasons, but are much better college students, but they don't have the grades to get into the "elite" schools.

So sure, if you came from a family who emphasized getting into Harvard or Stanford, and drove you relentlessly to get great grades, and provided all the support you needed all through high-school, and you were well fed everyday and had after-school SAT training, etc,, etc., then you probably should have gotten a 1600 on the SAT and gone to Harvard. But a LOT of people were missing one or more of those elements in their upbringing.

Not to mention, some people (this was my story) basically just blow off high-school because they're bored senseless, resent being forced to attend, and aren't the people with the right temperament to be part of the cool clique and therefore despise huge swathes of their time at school. Of course, that same kid is probably going home and building Tesla coils and experimenting with high-voltage electronics, or writing code or something after school, but it isn't reflected in their grades, and it won't help them get into an "elite" school.

Also keep in mind that I'm not saying that a Fayetteville State or UNC Pembroke represents a "fat pipeline". But I am saying it represents a pipeline, and one where a resource starved startup is less likely to be competing against Google or IBM or Facebook or Yahoo, etc., for people.

I am extremely skeptical of this line of reasoning because it assumes that only important criterion for choosing a school is whether it's good or not (or, alternatively, whether it has brand recognition, depending on one's perspective).

There are a vast swath of other reasons that could rank more highly then whether a school is good or not. Two reasons easily in reach are geography and financial resources. I certainly restricted my choice based on those criteria well before whether the school was any good, and I don't regret it at all.

Delivering on a bad project just gets you typecast, and that's in the good case where you do well. Then there are the bad projects that are bad (and might not be delivered) because they're impossible or pack the bad kind of challenge (i.e. hideous legacy code, which won't get the same respect as building a new system).

The luck of the first project determines everything in the types of companies that we're talking about. And a lot of it is luck: sometimes, as you've noted, people from less prestigious schools land well early on and kill it. However, pedigree is a variable that people (at least, in theory) have some control over. For example, if I wanted to go back and get a PhD, I'm sure I could, and I could probably get that pedigree. (PhD admissions are actually competitive, but I'm certainly smarter than 95+% of those getting into Harvard/Stanford MBA school.) But do I want to deal with an archaic, slow application process and pay 5 years of opportunity cost, given that I'd be 32 at the earliest point that I could start? Probably not, and I shouldn't be penalized for it.