Relaxation was definitely needed and planned on an as-needed basis. As I said in the blog post, I left school almost every day at 11pm for my first two years at DigiPen. On the days I didn't leave that late, I went to work out at the gym, went home early to play games, or hanged out with friends from my study group; also, when the weather was nice, I would go jogging or play ultimate frisbee. How much game project work left to do was the major factor I considered when balancing time between work and leisure. My team didn't really employ a systematic method to maximize productivity. We just used Jira to track our progress and had weekly meetings; that's about it.
As for the second question, yes, I had been dreaming about going to Naughty Dog since high school (circa 2004) when I was back in Taiwan. After coming to DigiPen, my plan was to get a job somewhere else, build up experience, get a green card, and then apply for Naughty Dog (because a foreigner with only a work visa can't switch companies without leaving the US to wait for another work visa). As luck would have it, I ran into Naughty Dog's recruiter at GDC 2013, things happened, and my plan was fast-forwarded by 5-6 years. You can read the whole story here.
Please read this, too: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/dont-go-to-art-school-138c5efd45e9
Also ask yourself: what do you want to do? Model? Yeah, totally do Gnomon. That's a great course. Animation? Try animation mentor. We have some animation mentor grads working at my current studio.
We also have a few full sail grads working on my team, and some kids who went to SCAD. Ringling tends to feed more into film.
The advantage Digipen gives, the only real advantage over those schools, is the chance to work on student games. Also to meet lots of programmers and designers. It's a great four year networking event, and while the animation program is solid, it's no better than any other school imo except for getting to work on games. That was a huge asset to me, honestly.
I guess the best advice I can give is ask yourself what it is you want to do, if it's games, absolutely keep digipen in mind. If it's just general 'art', look into gnomon or animation mentor programs.
Some companies care if you have a degree or not, but I'd say 90% of them don't and it's 100% portfolio that matters. Art is ALL show me don't tell me. The portfolio lands you the job.
Unreal 4 has quite a few tutorials for it as well. I know for certain that many can be downloaded from the same system that you get the Unreal 4 engine from(I'm sure that will help immensely when getting used to something as complex as unreal). Also consider something less complex like gamemaker or some other 2D engine. 2D games are considerably easier to make. I suppose design-wise not so much, but programming a 2D game is leagues easier than a 3D one. Definitely look into both of those things when you have the time.
I wish you good luck!
EDIT: Adding Link