Me thinks they’ll be just fine! 
My point wasn’t to say that they wouldn’t, but rather to show that no one has a lock on jobs. Not only does CMU not crack the top 15, but none of the rest under discussion here do either. That said, they’ll all have great employment opportunities. Certainly students from all of them likely work at NASA and SpaceX.
All those colleges are bigger than CalTech, in some cases much much bigger. Even if you just take the STEM majors at the broader universities, it’ll be a lot more than CalTech’s enrollment of about a 1000.
You’re missing the point. It’s not about Caltech. It’s that the OP’s student will be fine no matter where they go.
Yes! Engineering is just different that most other disciplines. I don’t think that any of my potential employers cared that I went to a top-rated civil engineering program. I’m still glad I attended UT, but it didn’t help my job search.
I understand that point, I’m an engineering major myself, but saying pedestrian engineers and CalTech to prove it or CMU not being on the SpaceX list seems interesting to say the least. And WashU isn’t even on the SpaceX list.
Respectfully, you ARE missing the point.
I didn’t say that, a Caltech professor with dual PhDs in math and physics who managed one of the biggest NASA projects of all time said that to me.
I am NOT making a blanket statement that Caltech engineers are pedestrian. I’ve been told by someone who should know better than either of us that they CAN be. Engineers trained anywhere can be.
The point I’m attempting to make is that it is FAR more about the person than it is about the school they went to.
As for Wash U, NONE of the OPs schools are on the list. What does that tell us? Precisely nothing.
Everything related to Caltech and SpaceX is a non sequitur that was started tongue in cheek by another poster.
Bob Behnken is a WashU ME grad.
Worked out pretty well for him! 
Back to the OP…I’m not pushing Wash U at all, but defending the fact that attending the institution won’t limit opportunities. As evidence, the top 10 employers of Wash U alumni on LinkedIn who list engineering as “what they do,” in order:
Don’t discount Wash U if it feels right because of some squishy at best data that says it’s a “step down.”
Want an interesting exercise? Look up ANY school on LinkedIn. Select alumni, engineering as what they do, and then look at the top ten for where they work. You’ll find there’s a strong regionality. Beyond that, you’ll find most top ten in the same region to be quite similar. Caltech and San Jose State have quite similar top 10s.
In this process, gut feeling is almost always right. Good luck!
You can also use LinkedIn to see what schools the engineers at any company came from. That too is interesting because you can almost see industry specific patterns. Not comprehensive but kind of fun.
With companies that are big enough to have more than a couple from each school, you can really see a pattern of pet programs. It’s interesting that they are different for different companies. It is also influenced by the size of programs, but as you say, interesting none the less.
Not all Google jobs are the same. Not all SpaceX jobs are the same. Quantity by itself isn’t a reliable indicator, especially when not adjusted for college sizes.
True, but almost no company trusts critical positions to rookies, regardless of what their paper says.
Two Chief level engineers at my son’s company are both very well respected and deeply experienced in their field. One went to undergrad at Caltech. The other…Michigan Tech.
I know a person who works for Google in software development without a college degree. I also know another person who works for Google Brain right after college. They’re on different career paths.
Indeed. It’s the individual however that will be nearly 100% of the determining factor in where they land. There are students educated at Podunk U working at Brain and MIT grads doing fairly menial things. Engineering is very egalitarian. With few exceptions (Financial Quantitative Analysis from MIT as one) there are no schools that grant the engineering golden ticket to the attendee.
This is a well tread path, but I do believe that we’re you earned your degree matters. Take the LinkedIn thing - look at as many companies as you want. If where you earned your degree did not matter then you’ d see schools randomly listed. That’s not what you’ll see. LinkedIn is not definitive but it is indicative.
A single data point is just that, but my S is in an AI research group in a SV unicorn and everyone in the group (MS and Phd only) is from 3 schools : Stanford, CMU, and Cal.
Every company has their pet schools. For the most part though, it’s confirmation bias. Your son is where he’s at because he’s sharp and has demonstrated that he works well with others. He may not have been at THAT group, but he would have had great opportunities no matter where he went.
My son works for a startup that has been heavily hyped in the tech and financial media. One of the cofounders has degrees from Cal and Stanford. One of the Chief engineers has a PhD from Caltech. They don’t have any other engineers from those schools, because they don’t recruit at any of them. They have more Cal Poly grads than any other institution (my son was the first and the first new grad they hired), but roughly half their employees were educated in Europe.
When he was contemplating switching to Stanford for his MS, multiple engineers on this forum said that they’d worked at companies that preferred Stanford grads, but had worked at just as many that favored Cal Poly grads. He stayed at Cal Poly for a funded, thesis based MS, which wasn’t an option for MEs at Stanford and got out a year earlier.
At the end of the day, most of a person’s potential success, especially for engineering, is baked in when they graduate from high school.
Yep!