"Any degree at a good university will expose you to people much smarter..." and that is important, but I think you can also get the same benefit from working on

"Any degree at a good university will expose you to people much smarter..." and that is important, but I think you can also get the same benefit from working on projects with really smart people, reviewing their code, and having them review yours. Open source projects are great for training people. Google's code review process with Mondrian seens like a super example of this (from my perspective - outside, looking in.)