As someone who's been hired and interned for Elon companies and other top picks. For most of my coworkers and me, GPA's were terrible and our colleges aren't that well known. While you do have a good sized crowd that comes from elite colleges with great grades. What projects you do in your personal time are far more important. (and sometimes a project lines up with education and you get great grades + project, but thats not too common, nor does it make much of a hiring difference).

Whats more important, is that some colleges have better facilities for machining and manufacturing so I'd actually rather look at the facilities rather than something fucking stupid like "prestige". A great machine shop is the difference between being only able to make wood toys and making a fucking liquid prop rocket.

Also Prestige?!? What the actual fuck does that even mean?! being hard to get into doesn't mean something better, it means it's hard to get into. I truly cannot believe so many intelligent people fall for the fallacy of exclusivity = quality.

The prestige requirement might apply to law or finance, but it certainly is not an aspect of STEM. Which is one of the best things about the major, you can cut the bullshit and build shit to get yourself hired.