I bet there's a lot of correlation. I also did my Ph.D. at MIT, and had a similar experience. My first year was horrible and I was probably one emotional breakdown away from therapy, but it was impostor-syndrome stress, not any silliness of the program itself. The rest was fantastic, and changed me and my life for the better.
I was lucky to attend the wedding of one of my former Ph.D. students a month or so ago. At the (not all that large) wedding were about a dozen of his friends from grad school. It was a fantastic reunion, and evidence to me about the truth of what Jean wrote of finding some of the most intellectually fulfilling friendships of her life.
None of this is intended to deny that others have bad experiences, at the same or other schools -- two people having a great experience is just that: two people's experience. I have a good friend whose horrible experience as a biology Ph.D. at Berkeley led her to reject the entire <expletive deleted> field.
There's a lot of material out there that's negative about the Ph.D. process, and it's useful to hear the positive experiences side, which is (IMO) a bit less represented.
I was lucky to attend the wedding of one of my former Ph.D. students a month or so ago. At the (not all that large) wedding were about a dozen of his friends from grad school. It was a fantastic reunion, and evidence to me about the truth of what Jean wrote of finding some of the most intellectually fulfilling friendships of her life.
None of this is intended to deny that others have bad experiences, at the same or other schools -- two people having a great experience is just that: two people's experience. I have a good friend whose horrible experience as a biology Ph.D. at Berkeley led her to reject the entire <expletive deleted> field.
There's a lot of material out there that's negative about the Ph.D. process, and it's useful to hear the positive experiences side, which is (IMO) a bit less represented.