[stch]

Why do you think it's so surprising that when comparing CS graduates and someone who's spent 4 years in the workforce doing real programming work, the latter is better at doing exactly that? I was CS grad from Stanford, and I agree with the other guy -- an enormous amount of the work I did in college was mental masturbation that, yes, did help me get better at programming, but didn't make me nearly as prepared for work outside academia as I would have been had I been working outside academia.