In my case, I'm working full-time and none of the Hacker Schools are close by and I wouldn't have the opportunity to take any of them on full-time as most of them require.
I think it would be a wonderful learning opportunity and would be really cool to do, but realistically having to leave my current job to go to one of them wouldn't be a good choice for me.
I applied to the Georgia Tech Masters program back in November/December and heard back from them in late December/early January.
I didn't end up getting into the first semester that started in January, but they did give me the option of starting in either the Summer or the Fall and I chose to start in the Summer, which means I should be taking my first classes in May.
To me, this works out a lot better because since it's online I'll have a bit more freedom to be located where I am and still hopefully get to learn a lot of cool new things. Plus there's that additional benefit of having a Masters degree at the end of the process (I work for a college and to teach any of the Computer Science courses you have to have a Masters degree so if I ever want to do a little teaching in that department I'd have that opportunity to do so, since my day job is in the IT Department).
If you have any questions on how applying for the Georgia Tech program has been I'd be happy to answer as many of those questions as I can as well!