I bet there&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;s experience.  I have a good friend whose horrible experience as a biology Ph.D. at Berkeley led her to reject the entire &lt;expletive deleted&gt; field.<p>There&#x27;s a lot of material out there that&#x27;s negative about the Ph.D. process, and it&#x27;s useful to hear the positive experiences side, which is (IMO) a bit less represented.