[rokobobo]

A hiring partner at an HFT firm once told me why they had a disproportionate number of people from MIT or Ivy League schools, especially for fresh grads: they selected for intelligence, coding skills etc., but they also needed people who could very quickly focus on the top priority tasks for the firm. (For example, if someone committed buggy code and the firm was losing out on profits because its algorithms weren't running, do you hunt down the bug or do you revert?)

And it turns out that kids from Ivy League schools tend to be very good at constantly being aware of these top-level priorities for the firm. This applied for almost every front and mid office role in that firm: DevOps, algorithm developers, traders, researchers. I can't speak for all the firms out there, but I think at least my friend would happily substitute pedigree for another item on a person's resume that demonstrated experience with running a live system where downtime is very costly.