How about a school that provides you a "happy medium", neither l.a. or pure tech?

I've worked in I.T. for 30 years, and done my fair share of management of software engineers. If I'm interviewing an individual for a junior or associate position, then it is assumed that this will be their first or second job in I.T., and you look to their education to tell them how qualified they might be.

As others have pointed out, the amount of experience you gain while attending college speaks louder than the name of the school you attended.

Would I choose the star graduate from an elite university who studied with some of the top technical educators in the world, but never worked on a real world application, or the NYU student who did well in school, but built three working eCommerce sites for real businesses on the side, has his (or her) own blog, and interned at the Chase Bank Data Center while attending school?

If I'm Bill Gates, and I'm trying to create the next XBox, then the first candidate would be more attractive, because I could groom him (or her) to be the perfect little engineer for my project.

But the vast majority of I.T. managers will undoubtedly select the second candidate, just for the fact that most software work involves day to day business problems on real world databases. Pure tech schools do not do an adequate job of providing you with the business, social sciences, and *liberal* skills to understand how people work together and interact.

Career I.T. professionals who want to keep their careers must continually update their skills and education (both practical and theoretical). But ultimately, your people skills, and your ability to "think outside the box", will make you far more valuable as an I.T. professional in the business world.