> I'm wondering what kinds of opportunities I missed out on by not having a CS program with this level of rigor.

People over-state the difficulty of things and generalize something being difficult for them to being very hard and difficult to everyone.

The smartest people I know from school all went into academia.

That actually explains this whole situation perfectly. I’m making a huge assumption here, but if the people who had no trouble picking up this information, are the same people who end up becoming the professors, they probably teach in a way that does not cater to students who need the instruction and feedback of a professor.

My guess would be the dividing line goes between science and engineering. The top level science work requires a lot more (mathematical) rigor than the top level engineering jobs. (I say that as more of an engineering type myself, albeit with a confidently above-average degree of mathsiness.)