Graduate schools have personalities and sometimes strong-minded deans and professors have certain biases about who they want to recruit. Here is my two-minute stream-of-consciousness super-subjective impression of the schools I applied to. Don't get me wrong. I love them all and would be honored to attend any of them:

Yale is the super-finished-work/peter-eisenmann/meaning-and-symbol-over-performance/affordable-house-making school.

MIT is the unapologetic/emphasis-on-materials/super-legit/dorky school.

The GSD is the oma-like-starchitect-factory/boring-core-requirements/beer-and-dogs/massive-gund-hall/work-on-your-peofessors'-projects-till-you-drop-dead/diversity school.

Columbia is the omg-we're-in-new-york/x-labs/parametric-sustainable-stuff/computer-renderings/insert-stuff-here/who-do-you-think-you-are/what-do-you-mean-studio-space-this-is-new-york school.

Princeton is... well Princeton is Princeton.