As an engineering lead in a major firm I can say that with a lot of people from "name" schools you find that when the rubber hits the road they are the same as everyone else - some talented, some less so. But all of the MIT people I've worked with, all of them, were absolutely top notch. My biggest problem is keeping them challenged, not getting good work from them. Give them grunt work and they begin looking to go do something else.
The Stanford students always thought that they were better than they were.
The Cal Tech students would come to my table and just stare. Getting information out of the was difficult.
I agree MIT students were knowledgeable and communicated well.
At Berkeley it was always a matter of time before one of the students asked me why IBM sold tabulating machines to the NAZIS before WWII. Geez.
Best interview I ever had was with a Hispanic lady that had just graduated from a state school (not one of the premier schools). She came out of the LA ghetto, worked her way through college and was the first person from anywhere in her family to graduated from college. Her “never say die” attitude was unbelievable, I knew this gal was going places. I hired her and I was right. Plus she was a nice person.