For a somewhat large company, it may be necessary to come up with hiring standards to save time, one of which might be a minimum of a Bachelors degree, and maybe of a US college for simplicity of verifying the degree. I'm sure if you had the ear of an executive and they really wanted to hire you, they could make an exception, but that solution doesn't scale.

My point was more that the signal an elite college serves is relatively short lived assuming you then get experience at highly regarded employers. For example, once you have worked at a FAANG, no one cares if you went to a low ranked school.