[eranki]

I really enjoyed my MIT education, and maybe it made me smarter, but I can't say it made me a much better programmer. We had exactly one class (6.170) that was a practical programming course and the content should have been familiar to anyone with previous programming experience.

The foundational "computer science" skills held in such esteem by companies like Google amount almost entirely to an understanding of algorithms and data structures (you will almost never see an interview question based on, say, programming language theory), which was covered by exactly one semester-long course in our curriculum.

I think we learned a lot of cool stuff, but not stuff a working programmer really needs to know.

[papercruncher]

I practiced writing code a lot during UROPs (research opportunities available to MIT undergrads). While UROPs are not required, most course VI (cs majors) that I know did at least one during their 4 years there.

[eranki]

I think the alternative being proposed though (no brand name but lots of drive) assumes lots of coding experience outside of the classroom.