I have found that most of the Microsoft certificates are pretty useless and easily crammed so the vast majority of MCSEs out there are those who took all the tests in a two week "boot camp" where no-one can fail.
It used to be that if you saw a MCNE (Novell) then they really HAD to know thier stuff to get past the 14 exams needed to pass, but I think Novell may have allowed it to dilute recently.
My favorite exam was the CompTIA Project+ (Gartner Project), the questions were all multi choice where all the choices were correct, you had to choose the MOST correct!! That really does sort the men from the boys.