Definitely not. I don't even have a four year degree, much less one from an Ivy League school, and my co-founder went to some school in Australia that I didn't even identify on the application, because I didn't know the name and had no time to check. (Our company was in WFP2007.)
But if I were offering advice from what I know today, I'd say, "Go to a famously good school. It'll pay for itself in one to five years, depending on your path after college, and after that it's all gravy."
I dunno what goes into the application vetting process, but I'll give the YCs credit for being extremely fair in the interview process. I met most of the other folks in Boston for the interview process (and spoke with many of them for a lot longer than the 15 minutes the YCs did), and while most who made it that far were impressive, the ones actually picked for the program were exactly the ones I would have picked as being most likely to succeed. And, interestingly, an MIT group that I met was turned down.
But if I were offering advice from what I know today, I'd say, "Go to a famously good school. It'll pay for itself in one to five years, depending on your path after college, and after that it's all gravy."
I dunno what goes into the application vetting process, but I'll give the YCs credit for being extremely fair in the interview process. I met most of the other folks in Boston for the interview process (and spoke with many of them for a lot longer than the 15 minutes the YCs did), and while most who made it that far were impressive, the ones actually picked for the program were exactly the ones I would have picked as being most likely to succeed. And, interestingly, an MIT group that I met was turned down.