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So I think it is fair to say that MIT is quite a bit harder than even other top tier institutions.
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That still doesn't mean that a student in the bottom decile/quartile at MIT would succeed there, even if the volume and difficulty of the workload are significantly different. If the thesis is that many of the students who do very poorly at MIT do so at least in part due to inappropriate priorities and poor work habits, making the work easier doesn't by itself make anything better. (And in some cases, making the work easier may make everything worse -- there are plenty of smart kids who fail out of state schools every year because they did too much partying and too little work of any kind.)</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is the opportunities available and how those opportunities impact future career decisions and success. My son is a sophomore who earned a mixture of A's and B's each semester but probably would have earned all A's somewhere else. He seems to fail miserably one exam in every course every semester but manages to compensate on final exams. He sees himself as an average MIT student (note what Jessie wrote about living groups) and works hard but also is in a fraternity, plays a time-consuming sport and is active in a political organization. </p>
<p>I suspect that what will make him stand out as an applicant to graduate school is his UROPs. Almost everyone he knows has had a UROP since spring or summer freshman year. It amazes me that someone his age has already worked (and I mean conducted experiments not fetched coffee) for two well- known scientists. It amazes me even more how willingly these scientists helped my son learn not just lab procedures but how to act as a scientist -- how to read journal articles, how to fill out forms, how to generate multiple ways to solve problems. In addition, and I wouldn't recommend this, he got these UROPs simply by emailing professors pretty much at the last minute. </p>
<p>We know many students at top tier colleges who may have better grades, but these students won't have the quantity and quality of research my son will have when he applies to graduate school. I hope that will compensate for the B's, but I know that even if it doesn't, my son will enter his field with a good understanding of what working in a lab entails and experience that will probably ultimately help him.</p>
<p>Mhm. I'm looking forward slightly to getting pwned. High school was too easy. (I'll probably change my mind after the first few all-nighters. And I don't know if the work is like, conceptually difficult or just plain tedious. I don't mind the first one as much. A combination of the two wouldn't be so great.)</p>
<p>Anyway, with the 5.0 scale you can get straight B's and tell your friends you have a 4.0...at MIT. yay</p>
<p>Out of the GIRs I took first term, 18.02, 7.012, 8.01 - most of the psets are comprised solely of just 5 questions (18.02 had some routine questions and 5-6 harder conceptual questions). Pretty hard to fit busywork when your homework essentially only contains 5 questions, right? =)</p>