[gecko]

    I personally think this is silly.

I agree! Thankfully, that's not actually what Fog Creek does. Let's separate two aspects of this process, because they deserve different treatment:

  1. *Going to recruiting sessions.*  Going to recruiting sessions
     is expensive and time-consuming, as Liz noted.  To go to
     recruiting sessions, therefore, you have to optimize your bang
     for the buck, and *that's* where the selective schools show up:
     Fog Creek simply did get a better pool of applications when
     going to selective institutions.  There are other things that Fog
     Creek can do to optimize for candidates who actually build things,
     and it turns out they do those things, too (sponsoring intern events,
     sponsoring OUTC, and so on).  But career fairs at selective schools
     can be enormously effective, and are a bit easier to come by.
  2. *Evaluating applicants.*  When Fog Creek does résumé screening, a
     whopping *one out of seven points* is awarded for going to a
     selective institution.  Everything else--having a portfolio, having
     passion, demonstrating follow-through, etc.--has absolutely nothing
     to do with where you went to school.  And that's *only* used for the
     résumé screening.  Once you get your foot in the door and talk to
     a human, it never comes up ever again, in any context.  (When I joined,
     Fog Creek even did double-blind interviews to enforce that!)

So yes, only recruiting students at selective schools is stupid. But that's not what Fog Creek does.