A friend won't go to MIT!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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MIT to me is like pure engineering school although it offer other courses too.

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<p>That's giving short shrift to the non-engineering majors at MIT, many of which are among the best in the country. The MIT math and natural science programs, for example, are indisputably world-class. MIT has 12 Nobel Prize winners as current Professors. Why are these profs working there if MIT is only a pure engineering school? After all, there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in Engineering. Furthermore, take a look at the rankings of MIT in computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, geology (through Earth and Planetary Sciences). They are all ranked either #1 or #2 in the graduate rankings of USNews.</p>

<p>Or take a look at the social sciences. According to US News, the MIT Economics department is tied with Chicago for being the #1 graduate economics department in the country. For example, who's the 2nd most powerful man in the world? Arguably, it's Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Fed, replacing Alan Greenspan. Bernanke has a PhD in Economics from MIT. Of the 61 MIT-affiliated people who have won Nobel Prizes (either graduates, current or ex-profs, or former researchers), 13 of them are winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics.</p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/special/nobels.html#list%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/special/nobels.html#list&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The Sloan School of Management is also widely regarded as being one of the elite business schools in the world, included in the "M7" category of elite B-schools. What is notable is that Sloan is 1 of only 2 schools of the M7 that offer undergraduate programs (the other being Wharton). The Sloan School unsurprisingly dominates in the more technical aspects of management such as Operations, Information Systems, Supply Chain, and Quantitative Analysis. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/m7-business-school%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.answers.com/topic/m7-business-school&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Other highly regarded programs at MIT are Architecture, Linguistics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences (which is MIT's version of Psychology), and (perhaps surprisingly) Philosophy and Political Science. Those who may scoff at MIT's strength in PoliSci should note that the department is ranked 10th according to USNews graduate rankings, tied with Columbia, and better than Cornell (18th), Northwestern (21st), and UPenn (29th). </p>

<p>Now, granted the above rankings had to do mostly with graduate programs. I agree that graduate rankings by themselves don't say much about undergraduate program quality. However, I think I made my point crystal clear - which is that MIT is far far more than just a pure engineering school that has other courses. Those 'other' courses are in departments that are often times among the world's best. </p>

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But... why do you want to attend MIT if you are not engineering savvy??

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<p>Maybe you should tell that to, say, Robert Aumann. He's not "engineering savvy". His came to MIT to study theoretical mathematics (specifically, knot theory), and his work won him the Nobel Prize in Economics last year, specifically for the applications of his work to game theory. Are you saying he should not have gone to MIT? Or think of Ben Bernanke. Or how about Robert Mundell, who went to MIT and later won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on currency exchange rates? Or Lawrence Klein, who won the Nobel in Economics for his work on developing economic models that describe business cycles? </p>

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For kids just good at math and science but not exceptional good, what is the better choice between Caltech/MIT or other ivies? Will it be a wise move to major Bio in Caltech/MIT rather than some other University which offer stronger Bio program?

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<p>Some other university which offers stronger Bio program? Which one would that be? Again, according to USNews Graduate rankings, MIT's Bio department is tied for #2 with Harvard and Berkeley. Only Stanford is ranked higher. </p>

<p>The point is, MIT has an extremely strong and highly regarded biology program. There aren't exactly a whole lot of schools out there that have demonstrably better biology programs. The MIT Biology department is actually more highly regarded than many of MIT's engineering departments. For example, the MIT Civil Engineering department is "only" ranked #5. The MIT Bioengineering department is ranked "only" #7. {I use the word "only" with great trepedition, because a ranking of 5 or 7 is still extremely strong).</p>

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Some other university which offers stronger Bio program? Which one would that be? Again, according to USNews Graduate rankings, MIT's Bio department is tied for #2 with Harvard and Berkeley. Only Stanford is ranked higher.

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Haha, I was just going to make that comment.</p>

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<p>For what it's worth, I think it's rather ill-advised to try to sell any college to someone.</p>

<p>Also, MIT definitely isn't really easy, and it's not possible to coast by and do nothing, so if that's what someone wants, it's not a good place to get it.</p>

<p>just some thoughts yay :-)</p>

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<p>Thanks for the link, mootmom! The projects showcased seem to be from EC students, do you know if other do simillar stuff? Is EC more geared to hands on building and experimentation? </p>

<p>I ask cause I love building cool gadgets and tinkering with mechanisms.</p>

<p>BTW:
I was refering to this site: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/qmahoney/ec/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/qmahoney/ec/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I'd say EC tends to dominate in the organized building of stuff. People everywhere at MIT build things (the school motto is "mens et manus" -- mind and hand), but other places it's mostly a solo hobby or something a small group of friends would do.</p>

<p>Another thing you might be interested in is the Bad</a> Ideas competition they have every IAP.</p>

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<p>Yes, but the I thought one of the jobs of the admissions commitee was to see if the people the admit can handle the MIT workload? If your friend got in, shouldn't he be able to handle MIT?</p>

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<p>I'm curious, where do the students get the funds to pursue such extravagent projects? I mean, the materials must be expensive, right? </p>

<p>Also, where do they store these things once they've built them? Or do they disassemble them and reuse the parts?</p>

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<p>As for supplies/materials...</p>

<p>There's this email list called "reuse" where people basically post old things they don't want anymore. I get tons of emails everyday with people saying that they've left old computers, monitors, books, office supplies, etc etc somewhere on campus. You can get just about anything off of resuse, if you have good timing with checking your email and can get there fast enough. I've gotten a couple of books off resuse (including a physics textbook..<em>grin</em>) and a friend of mine has a room full of junk from resuse, including a nearly full-size fridge. My personal resuse best was getting a free VCR. =)</p>

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<p>What I like to see is the program regarding the undergraduate school. UCB has excellent graduate programs but the undergraduate classes and professor attentions is very different from Graduate school. Also I don't think majority of the students will be Nobel prize winners, so let us concentrate on the norm group. I like to know the rate of undergraduate students from MIT goes to graduate school. If you can point to some weblink, that will be very helpful.</p>

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<p>Obviously no school's majority of undergrads will win Nobel Prizes. That is a statistical impossibility. </p>

<p>I agree that many schools exhibit a large gap between the undergrad and graduate school. But this is a feature that is shared by many research-oriented schools, not just UCB, MIT, or Harvard. Anecdotally speaking, I would say that big public schools like UCB tend to have a gap that is larger than most. </p>

<p>As far as finding the rate of undergrads who go to graduate school, take a look at this pdf, especially page 3. You will see that nearly half of all undergrads go on to graduate school. Many who don't go to graduate school just don't want to. For example, if you're a Sloan undergrad, quite frankly, you probably don't really need to go to graduate school until perhaps later in your career when you may consider getting an MBA after getting some work experience. Plenty of MIT grads get good jobs and hence don't need to go to graduate school. </p>

<p>You may also want to look at page 5 of the pdf to see which graduate schools the MIT grads go to. You will see that far and away the most common graduate school that they go to is MIT itself, which reinforces the notion that the best way to go to MIT for graduate school is simply to go there for undergrad and never leave. The 2nd most popular destination is Harvard. </p>

<p><a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation05.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation05.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Thanks, Sakky. MIT should pay you :-) :-)</p>

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<p>zking, as for the projects that are put together by dorm groups, those are generally paid for through dorm funds. Each dorm and each living group within the dorm gets (a pretty large amount of) money from MIT to do with whatever they wish -- free food, trips to locations in the area, building a roller coaster in the courtyard, etc.</p>

<p>Your tuition dollars at work. ;)</p>

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<p>
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Yes, but the I thought one of the jobs of the admissions commitee was to see if the people the admit can handle the MIT workload? If your friend got in, shouldn't he be able to handle MIT?

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<p>Admissions committees are not perfect, you know. In particular, you know that candidates are trying to make themselves look as good as possible, and that can fool some adcoms into admitting people who shouldn't be admitted.</p>

<p>More to the point, the idea is that the adcom will admit people who can graduate from MIT, but not necessarily from certain majors. As I have noted several times on this thread, MIT is not purely an engineering, or even a natural science school. There are many other majors available. For example, MIT might admit somebody who has enough math/science talent to graduate from, say, Poli-Sci (which doesn't require that much math/science knowledge), but not with a degree in Math or Physics or Engineering. {Again, for those who scoff at the notion of studying Poli-Sci at MIT, I would again point out that the MIT Poli-Sci department is the 10th best Poli-Sci department according to USNews, which makes it one of the elite Poli-Sci departments in the country.} However, MIT doesn't control what major you end up choosing. Students have the freedom to choose whatever major they want, including the freedom to choose a major to which they are unsuited. What MIT does do is make it relatively easy for you to switch away from a major that is unsuited for you and find one that is more to your liking, in contrast to certain other schools that may actually lock you into a major that you can't complete.</p>

<p>I would also say that there is also an issue with personal motivation. You might have the ability to complete the degree, but that doesn't mean that you have the desire to complete the degree. Some people can do the work, they just don't WANT to do the work, whether because of immaturity or laziness or psychological blocks or whatever. Some students at MIT exhibit these problems.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Yes, but the I thought one of the jobs of the admissions commitee was to see if the people the admit can handle the MIT workload? If your friend got in, shouldn't he be able to handle MIT?

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</p>

<p>People fail out every year. Admissions committees do a good job, but they're surely not perfect.</p>

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<p>
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in contrast to certain other schools that may actually lock you into a major that you can't complete.

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Hmm... I don't know of any such schools...</p>

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Hmm... I don't know of any such schools...

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<p>A certain large public school in the West.</p>

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<p>Actually officially LOCKS people into majors? Gee. I had never heard about that... I wonder what the official justification is.</p>

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<p>I think it's because people are accepted to majors rather than by the entire university. The place is so huge that there are numerous schools in the university. So... if I had hypothetically wound up there, then I would be in the College of Chemistry. I might be able to switch majors from "Chemistry" to "Chemistry and materials science" or possibly even to "Chemistry and biochemistry," but it's very limited beyond that.</p>

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<p>dude that sucks.</p>

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<p>Yes, but Cal's College of Chemistry has the #1 ranked grad school in chemistry, so if you know that's what you want to do... </p>

<p>Fortunately, MIT has no such policy. :)</p>