Maame's College Extravaganza: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT and Harvard are in the exact same city, which makes Cambridge Brain Central. Because they're within the same city limits you'd think that I wouldn't go over location again, but you guessed wrong. Harvard is right in the 'downtown' area of Cambridge, right across the street there is a Panera Bread. MIT is past the downtown area, but not by much so you're not in the outskirts. Still, people are driving faster because there's less traffic and no one parallel parks at MIT because there is a huge parking garage right next to the campus.

MIT's campus is very metropolitan. Unlike Harvard, there are no gates, there is just a street where one part is MIT and the other side is not. The buildings of MIT are not very beautiful, I'm sorry it had to be said. Many of the buildings reminded me of the Grand Budapest Hotel after Zero took over and it was falling apart, not that MIT is falling apart, but it's the same kind of 1960's/1970's minimalist architecture. I'm not really a fan of 1960's/1970's minimalist architecture. There was one building, across the street from the Alchemist, that was truly breathtaking. The building that held the Admissions Office, one of the Maclaurin Buildings, was huge, with "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" (with "u's" as "v's") etched into the top of it. Being surrounded by a failing Grand Budapest was initially off-putting, but I decided to give the campus a try because it was MIT.

The real magic of MIT comes from the people involved, I think. Everyone I met there was extremely nice and informative, especially Tamika in the Admissions Office. After touring the school I had some lingering questions and she answered all of them really well without making the school seem daunting. In the bookstore the lady at the register was telling us all about the binary behind the new MIT shirts (every letter is made up of its own binary code).

My favorite part about my visit to MIT was how it wasn't just mine. If you're unaware my dad deals with computers for a living and my little brother took after my dad's keenness for motherboards and what not, so it was a family trip. When we went to the bookstore to look at shirts my dad and my brother were laughing at everything (that didn't include calc because my brother is 13). MIT was where my family had the most fun overall experience, and even though I can't put them in my suitcase if I were to be accepted, it's still nice to know that they enjoyed their time.

Now for the serious stuff: Snapchat filters. MIT's filters looked exactly like what a school for tech nerds would create. I didn't love them, but they made a lot of sense, so for that, I give MIT a 7/10. Nowhere close to the level of my hometown, but still very original and very MIT-like.