<p>One of the concerns I have about attending a tech school is that I will not be exposed to peers who are primarily passionate about things like government, literature, art, etc. Obviously, going to a STEM focused school will force me to constantly raise the bar for myself in my field of concentration. However, I'm worried that I would be narrowing my peer group too much too early on. Any thoughts on the advantages/disadvantages of this? </p>
<p>One thing that surprises a lot of people about MIT is that you’ll meet plenty of people who are incredibly passionate about activism, politics, music, art, literature, and anything else you can imagine – it’s just that, by and large, they’re not majoring in those subjects. </p>
<p>My best friend went to Yale, and I am not at all convinced that my group of college friends is less “intellectually diverse” than his. Students at MIT are tremendously more diverse than anyone gives them credit for.</p>
<p>Your concern is unfounded. MIT is not Caltech. The students are STEM for sure, but are as deeply involved in other disciplines. Tops in philosophy, linguistics - I could go on and on. I went to the “school” down the street and MIT students were not lacking in ability to do/discuss/excel in other things, and I interacted with a lot of them. But they did do kick our butts in STEM, even though we do not like to admit it. </p>
<p>That’s great to know, @molliebatmit and @awcntdb. However, it still seems intuitive to me that while individual MIT students may very well be well-rounded, as a whole the distribution of majors is going to be very different than at a place like Stanford or Harvard. I’m still trying to figure out how much exposing myself to different types of intelligence/talent in my peer group matters to me in my college decision. </p>
<p>I’m very conscious of the fact that college is probably one of my last opportunities to constantly be around a highly talented group of people who are all passionate about very different things, as I currently intend to pursue a graduate degree and ultimately a career in a STEM field. </p>
<p>Moreover, if I ever decide to switch to social science or some other field, the MIT alumni network might not be as helpful. In all likelihood I will not do such a thing - but hey, just a year or so ago I was confident I would major in X field, and now I’m planning to do Y. Both are within the realm of STEM, but I think it demonstrates that I’m not the sort of person who has known since day 1 what they want to do. </p>
<p>^^ I do not believe anyone said well-rounded, as pertaining to each student. The point being made was you will find sharp students in many fields and no less sharp or less diverse than the school down the road, with the exception that each MITer is damn good at STEM too - which is something the other school cannot say. </p>
<p>At MIT, your only limit will be what you choose to limit your self to. Seek and you shall find; but, if you expect to stand on the street corner and just meet different people, that is not going to happen. Students group themselves off too and you will have to find the groups that interest you. regardless of the school you go to.</p>
<p>BTW, 50% of MIT students change majors, so you are not the only one not sure of what you want to do. That number holds true for other colleges as well.</p>
<p>I started off as a biology major, and I deeply considered anthropology until I wound up doing EECS. (I still took a lot of anthropology classes! :P) If you’re into something like economics, business, philosophy, or linguistics, you’ll have plenty of company. Admittedly, things like anthropology are smaller, but I still manage to have conversations about it all the time.</p>
<p>Have you visited campus before? I think that might help you get a better impression of how we balance a STEM focus. Some people will completely focus on STEM, it’s true. But for many others (like me), we end up taking a STEM-ish mentality into our humanities courses, which is an approach I think is well worth exploring.</p>
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Yes, the distribution of majors is very different. But the point I’m trying to make is that the distribution of majors and the distribution of interests and talents are not the same thing.</p>
<p>It’s true that you’ll meet people at Harvard who are English majors, but you won’t meet very many people at MIT who are. But if you meet the same number of people who are passionate about literature and writing, does it really matter what they’re majoring in? (…especially since so many of those humanities majors at other top schools are pre-law or pre-financial industry or pre-med anyway?)</p>
<p>“But the point I’m trying to make is that the distribution of majors and the distribution of interests and talents are not the same thing.”</p>
<p>bingo </p>
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<p>I would guess that the STEM major at MIT who is passionate about literature may not be passionate in the same way as a literature major at Yale? Or have the same level of competence? </p>
<p>In this thread I detect a bit of “STEM majors are good at everything,” but I wonder if that is true. I doubt if a literature major at Yale would say “No need to go to MIT to have a good STEM discussion – just talk to me.”</p>
<p>While I agree that some MIT students certainly have broad interests in non technical fields and is strong in a number of humanities fields I think there are many cases in these fields where going to a less technical institution would be advantage. For example I took of classes related to East Asia during high school at a good but not elite state university and then later at MIT. The classes at the state university were much more specialized and technical which made the classes at MIT much less interesting for someone with relatively deep interests in the field. The state university taught classes like Korean film, Hong Kong cinema, Japanese film, Chinese film etc. which included a decent although not immense amount of formal analysis of film. At MIT modern Chinese film and literature are combined into one class and there is no formal analysis of film. The setup at MIT makes a lot of sense if the students are going to take one class in the field but is insufficient for those with deep interests. I strongly suspect this is true of most humanities fields where MIT lacks a graduate program. Similarly if you are interested in politics the opportunities and number of students with serious interests is surely going to be much greater at Harvard. </p>
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Not at all – I’m not saying that everyone is good at or interested in everything, of course. Just that there are plenty of people at MIT who are majoring in STEM but have strong avocational interests in other fields. Going to MIT doesn’t mean giving up having friends at school who are interested in politics, or literature, or fine art.</p>
<p>And of course there are people at other schools who are majoring in other subjects but who have strong avocational interests in science.</p>
<p>There are two things that I think that are being missed here. </p>
<p>Firstly is the segregation of STEM majors at non-stem universities. Look at the Yale map. Look at Science hill. Note that those who are STEM majors at Yale will be mostly seeing and socialising with STEM majors. Now look at the Stanford map, look at where the engineering students are compared to the humanities students. Now look at the MIT map, and these facilities tend to be more intermixed.</p>
<p>Secondly, is the degree that arts facilities are available for non-majors. I did a lot of theatre at MIT. I was involved in the MIT Shakespeare ensemble, with Dramashop to a lesser degree and with other theatre groups. We competed (and did well) in the New England theatre competitions, one of my classmates went on to drama school. I ended up doing improvisational comedy, that more than anything else got me my Actor’s Equity card, and I worked in the theatre for a time after MIT. Does Yale have better theatre facilities, and heck better theatre classes than MIT does? Does Northwestern? Absolutely. But they are there for the theatre majors. If you are a non-theatre-major at these schools, then there are the equivalent of am-dram societies, but your options are limited. As a non-theatre major, you will not be doing an intimate seminar with David Mamet (which I did when I was at MIT).</p>
<p>Yes, by definition, schools with film studies majors will have more film studies courses than MIT does. Indeed, there are a half dozen odd film studies classes at MIT and that’s basically it. Though there are solutions for that problem. When I was in the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble, one of my classmates became obsessed with reading the original King Lear stories in the original Gaelic. Now MIT’s foreign languages and literature section does not offer classes in ancient Gaelic, but it turns out that Harvard’s does, and MIT students can cross-register at Harvard for classes that they want to take that MIT does not offer (and vice versa). So he took Gaelic at Harvard, and when the Harvard final occurred in the middle of a MIT Shakespeare Ensemble tour over IAP, then ensemble faculty advisor proctored the Harvard exam for this student. I am very pleased with the performing arts education that I got at MIT. I think it prepared me for a career in the performing arts. I was a STEM major. MIT is much, much better at this than most schools merely because they need to be given the student body.</p>
<p>Another option would be to a look at Harvey Mudd instead of MIT. Students there must have a secondary non-tech concentration, and you also have the whole rest of the Claremont consortium around as well – an additional ~4,000 students, most of whom are not STEM majors. My D picked Mudd partly for that reason, and loves it – she did not want to leave behind her own passions for literature and art. Just another path you could explore. </p>
<p>^ Both MIT and Harvey Mudd require humanities/arts/social science concentration. MIT’s HASS + CI requirement (minimum 10 classes) looks quite similar to Harvey Mudd’s HSSA requirement (11 classes total).</p>
<p>So that part is similar. Looking at the Common Data Set for MIT, it looks like 83% of the undergrad degrees granted were in STEM fields. So that implies to me that 17% of the students at MIT are in some other major. A Mudd student will have at least 50% of the students on the Claremont consortium campus (assuming some others are majoring in STEM at the other Claremont colleges) that are focusing their primary major in a non-STEM area.</p>
<p>I would also emphasize that MIT’s humanities offerings are stronger in certain areas than others so if you have a particular interest you would be wise to see whether MIT is strong in that area. My guess is that in the vast majority of cases MIT’s weaknesses in the humanities are not significant enough to be deal breakers but are still important enough to warrant consideration.</p>
<p>Piper the CI-Hs count towards the 8 subject HASS requirement.</p>
<p>@intparent, I’m very surprised that 50% of Mudd students are focusing their major in non-STEM areas. Where are you getting that number from? </p>
<p>No, you misread my post. I am guessing that 50% of the students across the Claremont consortium are non-STEM majors. In case you aren’t familiar with it, there are 5 colleges in the Claremont consortium – Mudd, Pomona, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, and Pitzer. They share one large 5,000 campus space – each college has their own defined area and architecture (sort of like Lego pieces fit together), their own admissions, and their own graduation requirements. It takes about 10-15 minutes to walk across the whole consortium “campus”, and they are all right next to each other. But many things like libraries, health center, exercise facilities, bookstore, sports, extra curricular teams, etc. are shared across the campuses. And students can take classes at any of the other campuses. Now… the first few semesters at Mudd they are pretty buried in the core Mudd classes and don’t take many classes across the consortium. But that starts to change in winter of sophomore year when the core requirements have been mostly fulfilled.</p>
<p>The OP’s initial concern was about having people around in college that weren’t STEM focused. Just trying to say that Mudd offers that. Not saying you can’t get it at MIT, either, but Mudd and the Claremont Consortium are pretty unique.</p>
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<p>There are many people who double major in HASS at MIT.</p>
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<p>(1) Your CI-H classes do not have to be HASS classes. 2.00B, for instance, counted as CI-H credit but not HASS credit when I took it. This is why I said “minimum”.</p>
<p>(2) CI-M’s are part of the CI requirement as well. Harvey Mudd’s requirements have some writing involved – CI-M’s are writing-based classes, even if they’re often technical.</p>
<p>IMHO, the MIT STEM slant is not so much about the distribution of majors as such but rather in dominant epistemological modes; our econ is mostly at the quant end of econ (rather than at the political economy end), so too poli sci, etc etc, and there’s a pretty strong positivist instinct which, if left unchecked, can trend towards naive scientism in some cases. </p>
<p>OP’s concern, however, was: </p>
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<p>As someone with an S.M. from SHASS, I <em>do</em> think those peers exist at MIT, and while there may not be as many, I think there is a sufficient number to enable your continued development in these areas. </p>