I would suggest WPI because, well because I go there and love it. As you said it is a beautiful campus and that is one of the reasons I chose to go here. As you may know WPI has three projects that you must complete to graduate. The IQP which you do your Junior year something like 80% of the students go off campus for a term (7 weeks) and work on a project with a company. Most places are out of the country. (all locations can be found at
http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/IGSD/Projects/) I worked at the United States Patent and Trademark Office developing a training system for them during my IQP.
The MQP is your senior project and can be a lot of fun. Several people have done their project with FIRST to create new drive lines (CVT- Continuously Variable Transmission, 2002) or a new way of controlling the robot (glove to control arm). The projects are a lot of fun but there are plenty of other things on campus which are fun.
As other people have said Worcester isn't the best city but when you live on campus you rarely leave because there are so many activities on campus. We have a DARPA Grand Challenge team, a Formula SAE race car team, and other activities to get involved in. Oh and we also have a FIRST team. Every Sunday night a movie which was recently shown in theaters is shown on campus for $2.
Now that I am done selling WPI for a while, what major are you interested? I can tell you more about activities that you are interested in if you want. Feel free to contact me or anyone else on the team.