<p>coureur:
</p>
<p>Human got brain and brain is used to create the modern architecture along the Charles river.
Beauty is certainly in the eyes of beholder. A piece of concrete to one can be a piece of art to another.</p>
<p>Hmm, I wonder what the difference is between ‘prettiest’ and ‘most beautiful?’</p>
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<p>I’m sure you are right. People always have differing opinions about what is beautiful. My point was not that you can’t think that MIT is beautiful but that not many will share your opinion if you do. When people list all the wonderful things about MIT “gorgeous campus” is almost never included.</p>
<p>Coureur:
I think you can only talk about your opinion and not on behalf of everyone else. So it might be that not many share your opinion of MIT campus.</p>
<p>^^Hey, I don’t presume to speak for anyone but myself. But when I say that not many share your opinion the MIT is very beautiful, I’m merely reporting what I see here on CC. There have many threads on this topic before and almost no one lists MIT as a beautiful campus. I’m sure it happens but it’s very rare. Look for yourself:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/596302-most-beautiful-new-england-colleges.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/596302-most-beautiful-new-england-colleges.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/797561-america-s-ten-most-beautiful-college-campuses.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/797561-america-s-ten-most-beautiful-college-campuses.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/334528-top-10-most-beautiful-campuses.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/334528-top-10-most-beautiful-campuses.html</a></p>
<p>I’ve been on more college campuses than I’d care to count, and Wellesley definitely rises to the top for me as “the fairest of all”. Even their parking garage is interesting and attractive! Definitely plenty of cold and snow on hand. A little further south, Drew is also quite pretty; though not quite as extreme in the cold/snow department. On the other hand, it’s proximity to NYC might be a boon to someone considering a possible career in performance.</p>
<p>Drew has very reputable theater and music programs. It’s the home to the New Jersey Symphony (might have the name wrong, but you get the idea, and it’s a professional orchestra) and I believe also houses a Shakespeare festival. </p>
<p>Haven’t been to Wellesley but D and I find Gothic architecture a bit scary and oppressive, though beautiful and imposing for sure.</p>
<p>I love Columbia and I love Dartmouth – the green with the town adjacent really does it for me.</p>
<p>I first saw Princeton on a class trip in eighth grade and wanted to cry because it was not co-ed at that point.</p>
<p>S and I really like Williams (his school.) We like what some hate – that Route #2 goes through it so one feels like one is in the big world and not just on an isolated campus. Other people nixed it for the same feature.</p>
<p>Shows how subjective it really is.</p>
<p>I have looked up all the schools mentioned it and fell in love with the school that had 23,000 acres as a preserve. Was it Hanover?</p>
<p>And I must admit that I am an absolute sucker for the central waterfall at Cornell.</p>
<p>Mostly, I love colleges the way some love cathedrals. So many are appealing.</p>
<p>I teach at a community college (but we’re extensive with a student populations of 22,000 +) and although it is not impressive the way many of these schools are, I love it too.</p>
<p>I love Stony Brook, where I attended, which most think is ugly. I think it is beautiful, though not so much as some.</p>
<p>And I was amazed at how beautiful the University of Indiana is. I looked at it because of the thread.</p>
<p>Fun times just going through the websites.</p>
<p>Cornell. (10 char)</p>
<p>Most beautiful: Oxford, Cambridge, The Sorbonne</p>
<p>In America: Yale, Sarah Lawrence, UC Santa Cruz, U Chicago</p>
<p>Most Interesting/Fascinating/Eclectic: MIT, Stanford (if you add the SLAC [SLAC</a> National Accelerator Laboratory](<a href=“http://www.slac.stanford.edu%5DSLAC”>http://www.slac.stanford.edu)), College of the Atlantic, Emerson College, NYU, Catholic U</p>
<p>Dreamy/Bucolic: Williams, Drew, Grinnell, Princeton</p>
<p>(all above is subjective opinion)</p>
<p>
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<p>POIH, MIT is a great school and I’m glad your daughter is doing well and enjoying herself there. Why are you so defensive, though? Why can’t there be one flaw in it – that it’s generally, in the opinion of most people who care about such things, not the best looking campus? That doesn’t detract from her education or her happiness. You seem like the kind of person who wants to be reassured that your choices are not just the best choices for you, but the very best choice that could ever have been made. What’s the big deal if popular consensus is that MIT isn’t the prettiest campus?</p>
<p>I have nothing to do with MIT but I think it’s central domed building is beautiful even if the rest of the campus isn’t.</p>
<p>And I think the Frank Gehry building is fascinating (even if it doesn’t work well, which it apparently doesn’t.)</p>
<p>As for defensiveness, it seems to be an occupational hazard of being a CC parent. I see a lot of us identifying with our kids’ colleges and defending them.</p>
<p>It may be defensive or it may just be that we are trying to debunk myths that prevail about a school that we now think we have “insider” information about.</p>
<p>MIT has an interesting building or two… yes, a beautiful college campus… no. Agree on Colgate. I also happen to think Colby has a beautiful campus. I happen to like Pepperdine’s campus with all the angles and spots to sit outside.</p>
<p>Mostly I think Harvard is dull because I’m not fond of red brick. If I’d had any sense I’d have gone to Yale where I could have enjoyed collegiate gothic (which I love), taken classes with Vincent Scully AND majored in architecture as an undergrad, but I didn’t. The river houses though are beautiful despite the brick. </p>
<p>I was surprised at how much I liked Carnegie Mellon. The core of the campus beige bricks, green tile roofs and some nice Beaux Arts detailing. It’s got some nice new buildings in the same vein that I like, and a couple of new buildings that make no attempt at all to blend in which I think is a shame. (They don’t have to look like turn of the century buildings, but I think they could make some effort all the same.)</p>
<p>The dome building at MIT is handsome of its type, but MIT really has a lot of really, really boring buildings. It does have a couple of cool ones though like the Alvar Aalto dorm that curves sinuously along the Charles and the new Gehry building.</p>
<p>It is so subjective, as so many posters have said. I couldn’t wait to visit BC when we were in Boston last summer and was so disappointed. I’d always heard how beautiful it was from alums…not sure what I was expecting. Same with Middlebury. Princeton knocks me out every time, though. Those arches, spreads of green grass, eating clubs on Prospect Street. First college I ever saw and made an indelible impression of what “college” looked like.</p>
<p>I am not a big fan of every building on campus matching – all red brick or limestone or whatever.<br>
For others, that’s a big part of what they admire.</p>
<p>dbwes: We saw a play at Princeton (Aristophanes) in eighth grade – eight kids got selected to accompany ninth graders. It was cruel because I found it so beautiful, and it was not co-ed at the time! I felt so gypped.</p>
<p>mythmom: Princeton is indeed so pretty, it’s almost dreamlike. I was there once in 1985 or thereabouts and needed to catch the early train back to New York. As I was walking, there was a mist rising over all the lawns just as the sun was coming up – it was stunning.
BUT . . . I think it was dke who brought up Princeton, not me 
(how DO people make those smileys??)</p>
<p>Eeek! I did it! :)</p>
<p>My wife says nothing compares to Cambridge (UK) and this is from a Mount Holyoke grad.</p>
<p>Kalamazoo College is quite beautiful, especially in the fall. Visited last weekend- the gorgeous campus definitely made an impact on me.</p>