Indian Geek

This is all great advice that I, as a CS undergrad, am going to take to heart.

Something along a similar vein that bubbled up on HN a long while ago is the Programmer Competency Matrix: http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm

For my own part, this was a golden find, as it describes components of five spheres of competency (Computer Science, Software Engineering, Programming, Experience and Knowledge) as well as - and this is the important part - the steps it takes to obtain mastery in the components of those spheres.

While this may partially be an oversimplification, it does put things into terms my game-conditioned brain can easily understand, and I suspect that I'll likely discover anything it has missed in my pursuit of mastery.

Your college curriculum may or may not involve going through the SICP, but it's something I recommend. It's available online...

...in HTML

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html

...in PDF

http://web.mit.edu/alexmv/6.001/sicp.pdf

...with an accompaniment

http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2007/06/19/introducing-the-sicp-reading-notes/

...and there are several archived video lectures on the topic

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

A few weeks back someone posted this on Hacker News: http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm

It might help you gain insight on how some employers might evaluate candidates, you can assess where you fit in the matrix, and work on improving in the areas of weakness (this is a long term thing).

I recommend reviewing the technical stuff so you can come out sharp and talk intelligently about those topics. Brain teasers often come up. It's been a while since I interviewed with Microsoft, but I remember lots of questions about data structures, linked lists, traversal algorithms, etc.

Employers are looking for people that are technically solid or show potential, have a good attitude, can work in teams, are good communicators, etc.

Good luck.

I'd say do both. If you can get a job with just the developer boot camp then that is probably worth while. I haven't done a boot camp so I don't know what they cover but there is quite a lot to computer science. Yes you may be able to program and do some software jobs but you would probably be constraining yourself to a small set of jobs.

Take a look at these for an idea of depth of software development:
http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm
http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/