[27182818284]

Fear not.

No, the Ivy League is not a hard requirement. I know two people off the top of my head that graduated from a school ranked > 100 that both now work for Apple. (Compared with say, Stanford, whose rank is tied at fifth in the 2012 US News rankings)

There are a couple details: 1. They did not immediately start at Apple. Both worked elsewhere for 2-4 years at other locations. (Places that were less than the Google-Amazon-Apple tier) 2. They both were ridiculously hard workers. Like every second I knew them, they were working. Are they cooking dinner? Oh OK, while something sizzles they would turn around to the laptop and write either half of a line or one or more lines of code.