The intellectual value of an MIT degree is only partially the classes themselves — it’s the whole experience, including who you meet, how you learn to think and

The intellectual value of an MIT degree is only partially the classes themselves — it’s the whole experience, including who you meet, how you learn to think and the stuff you do. I think that's true of many good schools; perhaps it's even the definition of a good school. It certainly was true of my own relatively well regarded engineering school. Who I met who influenced my future success, the opportunities I got access to, the way to approach learning new things, my preferences in extracurriculars, many more, all came from my time there.