I got into MIT by doing very well at math competitions, mostly. I also wrote a good application essay, which followed a certain kind of idea which is admired at

I got into MIT by doing very well at math competitions, mostly. I also wrote a good application essay, which followed a certain kind of idea which is admired at MIT - the ideal of the "passionate" young person, who is a sort of intellectual go-getter. This doesn't actually reflect my personality, but at the time I was somewhat dazzled by the MIT mythology, and I'm pretty good at writing in character. By the end of my time at MIT, I'd moved towards a fairly radical point of view about education, and about many other institutions in society. I think that the established structures of society - educational, scientific, political, or economic - tend to be highly conservative, in the sense that they defend a conventional view of what is 'scientific' or 'educational' and so on. In this way they devalue diversity. I personally don't think it is possible to develop the awesome potential of the human mind by following a 'program' of any sort. The defining characteristic of the mind is its ability to adapt, and to incorporate new ideas and new points of view into a more thorough conception of reality. This implies that one will progress most by constantly challenging what one has previously believed. But this kind of path can not be planned out in advance: at most one can try to have as wide a base of experience as possible, and to resist the urge to dismiss the 'outlandish' too quickly. In short, I think the primary characteristic of curricular education is its conservative opposition to diversity; while the most basic ingredient in intellectual progress is exactly that diversity. This view was reflected in my time at MIT - MIT has a rather strong curricular structure, and I found it frustrating in the extreme (I was frequently depressed while at MIT). For example, MIT teaches analytic philosophy, neoclassical economics, rational-choice political science: these are all echoes of the same narrow, scientistic outlook. Continental philosophy and heterodox economics follow a more tentative, experimental approach to knowledge, but they would fit poorly with MIT culture. As for whether it is a good thing for a young person to go to MIT, I suppose that depends on your view of a good life. If a good life is doing well at one boring, pointless task in order to be given a still more boring, more pointless task, then MIT is an excellent choice. An MIT education is genuinely rigorous (more-so than Harvard), and an MIT graduate can move onto graduate studies with confidence. From there, who knows? You may even win a Nobel Prize. If you want to achieve intellectual excellence, in a traditional human sense that would be understood by the ancient Greeks, I would look elsewhere. I get the sense that continental Europe is less fully colonized by one-dimensional thinking, although I can't entirely confirm this.