He's referencing Good Will Hunting.

It just really depends on the position/company you're looking at. I'm doing some web development right now (for the summer) and I learned very little of what I use during my CS degree at a top CS university. If you go to a decent school for CS you will be recruited heavily by the best companies. We are consistently visited by Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc.

Some companies are just looking for someone with experience writing code and can consistently get things done. Some are looking for computer scientists with good understanding of the concepts you don't pick up by reading a couple programming books.

I think what would be good for you, based on what you've said is to try and find a Statistics & Computer Science program somewhere. I'm about to start my last semester of undergrad in a Stats/CS program and I feel that I'm very capable of getting a lot of the jobs that you mentioned you were interested in. Additionally, if you know stats and cs you aren't confined to just being a "code monkey"

I've never heard of a stats and cs program, I am open to relocation for internships and transfers that are worth my while