Good to hear that engineering is less dependent on institutional prestige. As someone who doesn't attend a name-brand university, I hope to be evaluated more for my skills than for the school I went to.
Just find some way to get yourself into the "in network." That can be attending a prestigious university, but you can also get it from the right internships or hackathon connections.
I didn't attend a traditionally top-ranked university, but it turns out that the majority of my useful connections did.
It may make your first offer harder. Some companies are way more likely to put a booth at the career fair of MIT compared to Foo State. After that meh.. some people care about schools, many do not.
I would imagine that the social network one builds in college can help later on, too, if only for internal referrals. I would be interested to see what percentage of Google employees attended Stanford vs. other schools vs. started professionally programming without a college degree.
I didn't attend a traditionally top-ranked university, but it turns out that the majority of my useful connections did.