Career Path REPE

Alright big dog let me lay down the tracks for you step by step like I'm goddamn John Henry so you don't get Plitted. I'm talking an iron-clad, rock-hard, rocket-fueled, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-is-a-fucking-freight-train route to guaranteed success in God's chosen industry - real estate private equity. 

1. First off, you are correct to be over-obsessed with meaningless rankings that to most people don't matter. I need you to be more specific though. There's a massive difference in prestige between REPE 40-45 and REPE 46-50, not to mention REPE 27, so if you don't clarify someone is always going to assume the worst. Similarly, you say you go to a Tier 2 university, but there's zero context there. Is it a "public ivy?" Have your football or basketball team won a national title in the last five years? Are there any famous alumni? Do you happen to be a target specifically for Kansas City investment banks? If there is anything you can do to bump that to a self-ranked Tier 1.5 or Tier 1B university, that will go a long way to your career progression. 
2. Second, while Asset Management is a totally legitimate career where you can make a ton of money, and is absolutely essential to company success, you need to not give a shit about any of that and move to Acquisitions ASAP. If you want to move up from a top 50 company to a top 10 company, completely ignoring things like personal success, comp, your relationship with the rest of the team, locations, office culture, in a relentless pursuit of prestige above all else, you do this buy closing on fucking deals. Good deals, mediocre deals, bad deals - it doesn't fucking matter. No one gives a shit if you are the best asset manager in history and make projects profitable against all odds, you're still sitting on the chair in the corner of the room while Acquisitions is on the bed. 
3. Third, start studying for that GMAT now, if you are in a top 1% company and making top 1% compensation, you definitely need to give up two years of your career to come right back to the the same exact career you were in to begin with. 
4. With that out of the way, this is what you have to do: Use your internship to network into a full time job. Then work for 2-3 years as an Analyst. Then 2-3 years as an Associate. Then 2-3 years as a Vice President. Then 2-3 years as a Director. Now you're at your 10 year target, but you realize that the golden handcuffs make it not worth it to leave, you understand how comically unreasonable it is to launch your own private equity company at 32, your wife leaves you because you went to Kellogg instead of Harvard, and your small children don't respect you because you're only at the 9th ranked REPE firm in the country (and rumor is it'll be 11th next year) instead of top 5. 

You've made it though. Mission accomplished.