[anthonybullard]

Only going to reply to your last point, this isn't my experience at all with Google. I work in SV, and get contacted by an internal recruiter at Google a couple times a year. What school did I go to? None. Ok, I have a certificate from the Defense Language Institute, but no degree. So I'm not sure this is a problem.

[rewrew]

And you may be absolutely right -- I'm going off what I've heard from young people anecdotally out of college who say they weren't given a second look because they weren't from MIT or Cal Tech. But perhaps that's only for entry-level positions, or perhaps my information is just plain wrong.