<p>^ There is a big difference between determining which person to hire vs. how a person is treated once they start working. I consider the school attended when making hiring decisions, but once a person is an employee, it is completely irrelevant. </p>
<p>When hiring, it is VERY difficult to determine someone’s capability to do the work, since people exaggerate on their resumes, etc. It would be silly to ignore one of the few objective pieces of available information, the University which the person graduated from.</p>
<p>After an engineer has worked at my company for some length of time, either reporting to me or in a peer group, I have a much better understanding of the capabilities of that engineer. Their actual track record at my company is much more relevant at that stage than what school they attended.</p>
<p>I never specifically mentioned such schools as Stanford and MIT. I will happily hire people from good state flagship U’s and private schools of that caliber (such as RIT), but am a bit more skeptical of people graduating from low tier engineering schools, especially ones that I am not familiar with, and especially if they have few or no years of work experience.</p>