> Your original argument appeared to imply that it was a system designed to separate people by class, not by merit or educational attainment.

I guess my core point is that those people you note (and I've met loads of them too) would have been equally smart and educated if they'd gone to a less prestigious university, but conditional on their ability, they'll do better at getting higher status jobs because they went to an Ivy League.

> In my experience the people who are that selective about university pedigree are either doing it out of laziness (outsourcing selection process to the university filtering mechanism)

This was a HR level policy at a really fast growing tech company (Facebook, back in 2013). I remember it because I was so shocked that this was a thing (not being an Ivy League graduate myself).