Employers are presumably only dealing with students who finish their degree. They’ll therefore always hire the Harvard student, who not only has top SAT scores but is brimming with confidence after finishing in the top 1/3 at a top school. Only when they run out of Harvard students will they interview folks from second-tier colleges. (I wouldn’t hire anyone from Harvard rn, but I digress).
The real problem is that, if this is true, at least a third of students are dropping out of STEM degrees all over the place. Even the very gifted, high-SAT students at Harvard crumble when they’re suddenly not at the top of their class. I’ve no idea why they’re all such delicate flowers, but maybe universities should look at a different grading system. Say only 3 grades: top 10%, middle 80%, bottom 10%. That’ll still allow outstanding students to shine and truly weak students to go elsewhere, without depressing the rest of the class.