Having graduated from MIT, I would say that the Great Dome and other buildings surrounding Killian Court are beautiful. I don't particularly care for the moder

Having graduated from MIT, I would say that the Great Dome and other buildings surrounding Killian Court are beautiful. I don't particularly care for the modern architecture that makes up the rest of the campus, but I'm also not a connoisseur of architecture. At least 20 years ago, MIT's greatest strength was its student body and its culture. You got the sense everyone was striving to learn as much as they could, and most students reveled a bit in their nerdiness. In high school, I took classes at a well-regarded state school, and didn't get the same sense of intellectual hunger. IHTFP (simultaneously I Have Truly Found Paradise and I Hate This F'ing place) summed up culture pretty well. You got the sense that you and everyone else had lined up to drink from the fire hose, and were going to struggle through it together, and come out the other side better for it. I have several friends who got grey patches in their hair during undergrad from stress, that went away shortly after graduation and didn't show up again for another 15 or 20 years. I hope that pressure cooker feeling isn't actually necessary for rigor. I hope MIT has found some way to keep the rigor while being a bit more easy on the mental health of the students. MIT ensured every month had at least one holiday by inserting one fake Monday holiday in each month without a holiday, as a mental health break. I heard the mental health breaks were a result of the high suicide rate in the 1980s. Thankfully, none of my friends committed suicide, but a few friends of friends committed suicide in my time.