<p>All of those other factors are part and parcel of satisfaction. At the end of the day, if you really don’t enjoy something, you would stop doing it.</p>
<p>This whole story reminds me of a guy I know who’s always complaining about his job: that the office politics are suffocating, that the company policies are nonsensical, etc. But then when I asked him why he just doesn’t quit and find another job - which he could easily do given his strong qualifications - his candid answer is that the job pays extremely well. Hence, whatever problems he may have with the job, at least he enjoys the paycheck. Overall, if he truly hated all of the aspects of the job, including the pay, he would quit.</p>
<p>I’m also still trying to identify what specifically about MIT would improve its satisfaction level over the Ivies. That undergrads never interact with certain prominent professors, that the competitive level is intense, that the same textbooks and course materials are used at cheaper state schools - all of these characteristics are just as true at MIT as at the Ivies, if not more so, particularly in the case of the competition. Ivy students have to compete to earn top grades, whereas MIT students have to compete merely to graduate at all. </p>
<p>More Ivy students would not have graduated at all had they gone to MIT than are MIT students who had gone to an Ivy. Certainly both George W. Bush and John Kerry would not have graduated had they gone to MIT rather than Yale, and while perhaps that would have been better for the rest of the country, but it wouldn’t have been better for them. Put another way, students who flunk out of MIT would have been better off going to an Ivy and graduating - perhaps with mediocre grades in a creampuff major - but still graduating.</p>