> IIRC Google had an even higher bar in their early days: candidates had to submit a transcript showing a very high GPA and they usually hired people only from universities with elite CS programs.

Which sounds like a classic misconception of people with no experience outside of a fancy university echo chamber (many students and professors).

Much like Google's "how much do you remember from first-year CS 101 classes" interviews that coincidentally looked like maybe (among my theories) they were trying to make a metric that matches... (surprise!) a student with a high GPA at a fancy university.

Which is not very objective, nor very relevant. Even before the entire field shifted its basic education to help job-seekers game this company's metric.