You just suggested that a lot of ivy-league schools are second tier. I'm not sure you're very representative of the vast majority of people.

In Texas, there's stuff like Stanford and Cornell, which is ivy league -- 1-2 kids might do that. Then we have 2 top tier state schools, then it's the other stuff.

Everyone else I work with got some degree from an Ivy League. Half have PhDs. It carries some weight and I think we get better VC funding and it's easier to get customers, but I don't think the degrees do much beyond that.