Overnight Stay at MIT

Hey Bloggers
Having decided to go down the US College route, I decided to fly out to Boston (as one does)and stay overnight at MIT. Needless to say, the intimidation I felt was unfathomable as I walked around campus. Seeing students reading three heavily highlighted books simultaneously whilst walking was a strong contributing factor for this.
Walking down Infinite Corridor, I felt as if I was actually a student at MIT (woah!), strolling along with my backpack just like everybody else. Unfortunately, this feeling of inclusion was tainted by the fact that I was suddenly called a 'Prefrosh' (basically anything (yes i did say 'thing') younger than a freshman) by one of the faculty.
I then proceded to room 10-100 (Admissions Reception Center) to be greeted warmly by the faculty in said room.
Having waited for about 10 minutes, my host, Edward Yang, arrived! (woop woop)
He took me round for about 20 minutes, and I was thinking that everything is gonna be nice and easy, just a simple tour. He then kindly tells me that the class we're about to have is a graduate course in Formal Verification. Now, apart from not knowing what Formal Verification is, the fact that this was a graduate course immediately sent alarm bells ringing. However, on the outside, I just nodded appreciatively. He then proceeded to tell me that there were around 20 students in the class when the semester started, however, there are now only around 9. At that time I thought that the class was just boring, but during the class I saw that this was not the case at all. This class was amazing. The fact that you can get a prove the correctness of algorithms using computer programs was indeed mind-boggling to start with, but then became relatively clear. Of course there were some aspects I just didn't understand at all, but I still noted them down for further research.
I was then taken to Random Hall, which is now my hall of choice if I ever have the privilege of going to MIT. The people there were awesome! As soon as we walked in the kitchen door, there were about 9 people sitting around a table, all with laptops plugged in to a central power supply (cue ethereal atmosphere). There was even a guy just playing around with a magnetic stirrer he made himself.

At around 7, another Prefrosh and I strolled over to building 35-225 for a MechEng Product Design Presentation (2.009). This was particularly relevant for me as I am currently in the process of choosing a project for my Engineering Extended Project at school. The fact that I am using the same CAD technology as engineers at MIT was indeed very surprising. I was also amazed that the different teams had made mock-ups of their product in just a week, having researched it for the majority of the semester. This showed me one of the aspects of MIT that I absolutely love which is the students passion for engineering, their ability to work long hours and work hard too.
In short, It was an amazing time! I got introduced to some new programming languages (Haskell = <3) and new friends as well. I also got to talk with a graduate ChemEng student about his time at MIT as well as his current job.
Even though this is the first US College I've visited (out of about 6), MIT has set the bar high.....really high. Next stop, Harvard!