Can you attend Harvard and MIT at the same time?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>For grad school?</p>

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<p>There are some programs for which you can – for example, MD and PhD students in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) are considered to be joint Harvard/MIT students. And MD/PhD students at Harvard can do their PhDs at MIT.</p>

<p>But you can’t really attend two programs simultaneously if they’re not intended to be joint programs. You wouldn’t be allowed, for example, to pursue two PhDs at the same time, one at Harvard and one at MIT. (And it would be logistically impossible to do so, anyway.)</p>

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<p>Aww that sucks haha. Why is that? They’re like 15 minutes apart from each other.</p>

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<p>Because grad school is a full-time endeavor – I mean, I’m working in my lab 60-70 hours a week. There are classes, research, and teaching to be done. Even most joint programs are done sequentially, not simultaneously, like an MD/PhD program, which is two years of medical school, four-ish years of a PhD, and then the final two years of medical school.</p>

<p>Most science/engineering programs are very specific about the fact that you can’t have any outside employment while in graduate school, since you’re receiving a stipend and tuition remission to attend. And that would most certainly include being a student in another graduate program.</p>

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<p>Apparently Mankiw was in MIT’s Econ PhD program and Harvard Law School at the same time (although he did drop out of the latter); how did he pull this off?</p>

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<p>Was he actually, or was he apparently?</p>

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<p>From his website:</p>

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<p>Is it true that, though grad students don’t have to pay for tuition, they still have to pay for housing? If so, is the stipend enough to cover that?</p>

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<p>It looks like he attended MIT from 1980-1981, law school from 1981-1982, MIT from 1983-1984, and law school again in 1984. He didn’t attend at the same time - he took time off, and he got permission to go back.</p>

<p>@garfieldliker - I’m not grad student, but from my understanding, there is grad student tuition. Most grad students get RAships, TAships, fellowships, etc, and end up not paying tuition. I’ve heard stipends are quite decent and are enough to cover housing and live decently, if budgeted well.</p>

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<p>@garfieldliker – Each department within each university has its own budget, derived from a mix of grants and other funding sources. Students do have to pay tuition, housing, fees, etc., but in a top research university in science, grad students are generally offered a package that pays for all of this, including health insurance and a living stipend. </p>

<p>Some schools cover more, leaving the student free to study the first year or more, and some cover less, requiring the student to work as a TA or RA right out of the gate. Lower tier schools have access to fewer resources, and that can leave the student short in some areas. Funding is far better in the sciences than in the humanities. There are several online websites where applicants accepted to graduate schools post their offers, including the finances, and this is done by field, so that you can compare. If you search around on Google with several key phrases, you’ll find them. Here’s one: <a href=“http://forum.thegradcafe.com/[/url]”>http://forum.thegradcafe.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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So it was sequential, as I pointed out for other joint degree programs like MD/PhD. It’s still impressive that he basically completed his PhD in two years of full-time work, but of course we’re talking about one of the top people in an entire field, not about the average graduate student at a top institution.</p>

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My program pays a stipend of $31,000 a year. Biology stipends happen to be fairly high relative to other STEM stipends, but even the more typical ~$20k is enough to live on. You won’t be living like a king, but you won’t have to take out loans, and you will certainly have enough for food and housing.</p>

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<p>I mean you basically can, right? If there’s an interesting conference going on at Harvard and you’re a MIT PhD student, it’s not like you can’t go. If there’s a course you want to attend at Harvard, it’s not like you can’t go. If you choose to do the requirements for both, it’s not that you can’t. </p>

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<p>To give perspective, in mathematics, this is around the funding offered by the NSF graduate fellowship, which is already significantly higher than the funding offered by most university fellowships. Although, some wealthy private universities may offer funding opportunities similar to this if you just teach a small bit. </p>

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<p>I want to add that in mathematics, one is nearly always offered such a package even if not going to a <em>top</em> university. Could be due to the difference between a mathematician and a pizza, but who knows. </p>

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<p>I was unaware of this - strikes me as slightly odd. I am aware that there’s usually a restriction on accepting multiple fellowship offers, and if you get a fellowship, teaching on top of that does pay more, but it’s not an exact sum of the two quantities by any means. </p>

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<p>You do have to be a bit careful if you don’t have an attractive offer of some sort. There is a huge difference between 20K and 30K, as you can imagine.</p>

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<p>Well, teaching wouldn’t count as outside employment, since it’s still the school paying you. </p>

<p>The Harvard GSAS guidelines (and these aren’t just for my program, but for all of Harvard) are pretty specific, and I imagine other schools have similar guidelines.

So this does leave open the possibility that you might be able to have a part-time job (if your fellowship allows it), but of course being a student in another graduate program does not fit this bill.</p>

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<p>A friend of mine is formally a Harvard grad student, but her PI is at MIT so she spends most of her time at MIT, and has both Harvard and MIT courses open to her. I don’t know the details of her arrangement though.</p>

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<p>@Mollie, yes the example I was thinking of involves teaching for the school and tutoring external to that (that is, for a company nearby) as a part-time thing. This would be one of the easiest ways to flexibly get something extra, especially if the stipend in question were less attractive than your own (I think this is usually the case).</p>

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<p>It is also reasonably common, I hear, to have a Harvard thesis supervisor as a student at MIT and conversely. So really you can get the best of both worlds if persistent.</p>

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<p>So you absolutely cannot enroll in degree programs at both MIT and Harvard without it being a joint program?</p>

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<p>You can’t enroll in two programs simultaneously without them being joint programs, whether they’re at the same school or at different schools.</p>

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<p>What would the advantage be, aside from getting money from both (which they of course won’t let you do)?</p>