I started an internship at what I'd consider a "dream company" a little over a month ago. I found that technical experience really isn't the most important thing (I'm a freshman in college without a ton of previous experience) as well. It seems to me that unless you're talking about a real computer science job (e.g. advanced algorithms), if you have the fundamentals of programming down you can learn the details of what you'll be doing on the job. I don't have enough experience to judge how broadly that applies but it has been the case for me. You can see my submissions to read about how I got my internship (not sure of the etiquette for posting your own link).

Great post!