Take Jensen Huang, for instance, he graduated from a school ranked around 200 or 300, one that you wouldn't even remember after a glance. Stanford was where he landed a job and studied part-time, taking many years to finish.
His success in the chip industry came as Taiwan's chip sector was on the rise, and he had family connections in that field helping him out.
It's basically like the Chaozhou gang relying on family ties; it's just that his relative was in the chip game.
Instead of grinding at Stanford, he could have just leveraged his family connections.