Maclaurin Building draped with an MIT Police banner
College consultants will always tell their students to pick up a copy of the school newspaper when they are on college visits. It’s another window into what’s happening on campus. I always grab one, and it’s usually interesting.
But no headline was more shocking to the eye than the one that confronted me when I looked at MIT’s The Tech on April 19, 2013: “MIT Officer Killed, Marathon Bombers Responsible.” 
I flew into Boston early that Friday morning (for four days of college visits) to find the city on virtual lockdown five days after the Boston Marathon bombing had shocked the country. Overnight, the two brothers responsible for the attack had unleashed violence and terror on Cambridge, Mass., and nearby Watertown. One had been killed by law enforcement and the other was the subject of a region-wide manhunt.
Public transportation was shut down and cab service suspended out of Logan Airport as I drove my rental car down a deserted highway and checked into a hotel right across the street from MIT, which was supposed to have been the first tour of my trip. Instead I stayed inside all day watching news coverage and talking on the phone with my daughter, a student at Tufts in nearby Medford/Somerville.
My room was a few blocks away from where MIT officer Sean Collier had been shot and killed the night before; and less than a mile from the apartment on Norfolk Street where the bombers had lived. By Saturday the second suspect was in custody and people were back on the streets, as Boston struggled to regain a relative sense of normal.
I walked the MIT campus, taking in the architecture both majestic and quirky and marveling at the buildings housing programs such as the Center for Bits and Atoms, the Laboratory for Human and Machine Aptics, and the Condensed Matter Theory Group.
Flames flickered in candles at a memorial to Collier just off Ames Street that swelled with flowers and stuffed animals and written tributes. A man stood solemnly, motionless.
Memorial to Sean Collier
Two days later I finally sat in the re-scheduled information session in the basement of the earth sciences building in front of an admissions officer and a blackboard. She told us the kind of students MIT was looking for (“collaborative” was a key word) and advised students when tackling the short-answer questions on the supplement not to get too crazy figuring out how to be creative: “Just answer the questions. We just want you to answer the questions.” On the tour, we heard how MIT once played a little prank on rival Cal Tech: They drove across the country, stole their cannon (an actual cannon), brought it to MIT, and put it on the campus lawn. I stopped afterward in Kendall Square at one of the incredible food trucks on Carleton Street (Clover Food Lab—yes!—started by MIT grads). The weather had turned warm; the campus was bustling with activity.
At this point, MIT was growing on me, big-time. I would recommend it to everyone I knew, if only everyone could get in (2014 acceptance rate: 7.6%).
This year, one year later, as the city and its many institutions, educational and otherwise, and its resilient citizens prepare to remember the tragedy of April 15, 2013, there are many reasons reasons to love Boston. As for MIT, here are a couple: A 33-year-old dancer who lost part of a leg at the marathon last year took to the dance floor once again last month courtesy of a new prosthetic leg specially designed for her by Hugh Herr, director of biomechatronics at MIT’s Media Lab.
And 35 runners have signed onto MIT Strong, a group that will represent MIT on behalf of slain officer Collier at the race on April 21. “After the tragedies of last April, MIT needed to be part of this year’s marathon,” says Sally Miller ’16, one of the volunteers organizing the team. “We want to remember Sean, and we want to show the world that MIT Strong is part of Boston Strong,” according to MIT News.