<p>The conventional wisdom among the cognoscenti is that it's the qualities that Ivy and other elite students bring with them that accounts for success is later life, not the stamp of the institution upon their brow. </p>
<p>As with many things, I think this is largely but not completely true. For <em>most</em> careers, you can do fine with a low-ranked UC or Cal State degree as your point of departure. In some cases--if, for instance, you want to become an investment banker or a Supreme Court justice--you're stacking the deck against yourself but I'd say it's a probabilistic thing, not absolute and deterministic.</p>
<p>However, it's something of a cliche but true: there are an awful lot of CEO's out there that were one-time "C" students at medium-grade colleges.</p>