Don&#x27;t worry about it. People who get paid to assess the actual -- not perceived -- quality of tech talent for a living (hiring managers, bigco recruiters) aren&#x27;t fooled by this. The mere amount of stamina it takes to complete an Illinois engineering degree is enough of a signal.<p>Your experience might be different if you&#x27;re dealing with money guys with no operating experience who trust the Harvard&#x2F;Stanford pedigree uber alles, second&#x2F;third-tier startup founders who dropped out because they&#x27;re &quot;the next steve jobs&quot; and would rather drop acid than finish their degrees, &quot;journalists&quot; writing schlok &quot;content&quot; for valleywag&#x2F;techcrunch etc. without an iota of fact-checking, and other hilarious SV stereotypes that this area seems to attract in droves. Try not to let it get you down too much. There&#x27;s more to life that the front page of Techcrunch.