I can't think of much about MIT that can't be replicated by a dedicated individual. And I think the industry as a whole agrees with that. There seems to be consensus that where a degree is from matters much less as industry experience increases.

I said nothing of the sort.

I said they only require 1 university level math course in addition to discrete math, and a vague in this short overview science requirement, let's call it 1 course with a lab component (but it could be more).

All MIT undergraduates are required to do a lot more university level math and science, more than twice as much of the former given the usual pace of other universities, and four times as much as the latter. It's not optional, and FB/Google/whatever doesn't have to do any investigation of their transcript, just confirm they graduated from MIT (or CalTech, but it's 1/4th the size and science, not engineering oriented, I doubt they see many applicants from it and those should get true red carpet treatment).

And that's without getting into intangible benefits; as a physics major mentioned to me in my first week, "everyone" who attends MIT learns how to do electrical wiring. No, it's hardly required, but any vaguely curious person will pick up a lot of science and engineering just by rubbing shoulders with 4,000+ other STEM undergraduates for 4 years.

Compare to Zuckerberg's Harvard: back when I attended MIT, the math requirement for graduating from Harvard was proving you could do algebra, and I now find its CS program is not ABET accredited. That said, it's math heavy, requiring a linear algebra course which I assume goes beyond the linear algebra taught in MIT's required 2nd calculus course (see more here http://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/computer-science).

Strange, but they are Harvard (and ABET has some ideas about how to teach CS that the MIT EECS department does not agree with at all, like being able to teach design per se), they were a pioneering computer institution prior to fully electronic computers, and students can fulfill some of their requirements by taking MIT EECS courses.

(Let it be said I'm boosting MIT too much, if I wanted to do pure CS, CMU would be my first choice, Stanford probably 2nd, not sure about EE derived UC Berkeley (which has in addition has all those state school disadvantages, and nowadays many fewer of the in-state ones for residents), and MIT could easily be my last choice after the department panicked after the dot.com crash cratered enrollment for the first time ever.)

As for "applicants with MS degrees and published papers", presumably they wouldn't be in the same interview track as gaggles of new graduates.

Doesn't describe my degree at all.

But that's not standard for lower ranked ABET accredited CS degrees. On the other hand, just now, looking at UC Berkeley which is an EECS department, they require perhaps more math than MIT, multivariable calculus and linear algebra+differential equations courses on top of single variable calculus and of course the mandatory discrete math. And 3 science courses (a third in addition to mechanics and E&M; see http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/Notes/section2.shtml).