<p>Although I have heard that one can get help in MIT with classes, hw, etc. Is that REALLY true? Does anyone have any info regarding collaboration b/w students, cliques?</p>
<p>MIT is all about helping each other!</p>
<p>Or so we've heard...I have had bad experiences where people just DO NOT help thinking I would somehow do better than them with their help. Anyone on this board at MIT? I would appreciate your input.</p>
<p>I'm also curious to know how much collaboration really takes place at MIT. What about competition? Everyone says MIT is not competitive at all as far (as unhealthy competition between undergraduate students is concerned). I'm hoping that it's true.</p>
<p>Who has the energy and time left over after those psets to be competitive with each other? ;)</p>
<p>There is a great deal of collaboration among students here. I have found that this also means that there is a lot of cheating. It's really easy to just copy a pset instead of doing the whole thing, and some people opt for that option. </p>
<p>However, I have found a close group of people that I work with and we honestly work through the psets. MIT is like all other things in that you get out what you put in. Learning doesn't happen during tests or by studying for tests. Learning happens while doing the psets. I tried to do all of my psets alone for the first three or four weeks and they would take me around 8 hours each because I would get stuck on some little part of a problem. Then I started working with people and the time to complete psets went down to probably 3 or 4 hours because we helped each other when we would get stuck. </p>
<p>So yeah, collaboration is a huge part of education here.</p>
<p>well MIT is pass/fail for freshmen, so there's really not a lot of incentive to hoard information in order to get better grades than everyone else as long as you can pass. i think it gets a little bit more intense after freshman year, but by then most people have realized the value of collaboration and so still keep helping each other =)</p>
<p>It's pass/no record first semester of freshman year, but then it turns into ABC/no record second semester :)</p>
<p>Yes, collaboration is huge here, whether you're a freshman or not. There really isn't the cut-throat competitiveness that is rumored. Yes, you have to work really hard, but you can always find help. While everyone wants to do there best and excel, they won't do it at the expense of their fellow classmates.</p>
<p>There is definitely collaboration here. It's not just something that MIT advertises in their brochures; it really does happen. I said once before that it is less like us against each other and more like all of us against the Istitvte. Usually you will find a small group of people taking the same classes as you to study with. (Especially freshman year where everyone is taking the same stuff.) It definitely does make the work a lot more manageable.</p>
<p>I have to disagree a bit with angrod when he seems to imply collaboration is just as huge freshman year as it is in the following years. If you are majoring in one of the more popular majors (Course VI?), collaboration is definitely huge any year. This becomes less true if you are taking less mainstream majors such as the now absorbed Ocean engineering, heh. </p>
<p>This place is incredibly hard if you totally isolate yourself and do not collaborate (unless you are amongst the smartest of the smart). This is why MIT actively encourages collaboration and why it is very huge here. MIT wants to make everyone get used to being a part of a team, because in the real world, you will probably have to work with others. </p>
<p>One thing I would also encourage others to take advantage of is office hours. Office hours can be very HUGE. If you find the right TA, or professor, spending one hour in office hours can save you several on your own. Your grades will definitely improve and so will your understanding of the material. I am surprised to see that these resources aren't used more.</p>
<p>Oh, one comment about the cheating. It is definitely NOT worth it. Professors here are not stupid and they realize that cheating takes place (some pretty sophisticated cheating takes place, which often makes it hard to detect). This is why professors reduce problem sets to a tiny fraction of your overall grade. By copying, you are actually hurting yourself, because come test time, you are in major trouble (quite painful when tests can account for as much as 100% of your grade...)</p>
<p>Good point mit2007. I'm a freshman and a course VI major, so I guess with the bigger classes and all I do have a skewed perspective.</p>
<p>if you don't collaborate here, you're screwed! (unless you're some uber-genius, but 99.9% of us aren't). to be honest, I haven't felt any competition here at all, sorta weird i guess but it's just not like that</p>
<p>Haha, exactly vector.</p>
<p>As for competition, I usually only see it during lecture or in the smaller recitations. For some reason when you stick a bunch of overachievers in the same class, 90% of them don't say a thing, and some guy always ends up answering all the questions. Basically everyone is too worried about getting something wrong in front of everyone else, hah. This has actually gotten classes I have been in into some trouble. Sometimes our collective ego leads professors to believe we understand the material better than we actually do, and they either pick up the pace or make it harder! Moral of the story, ask questions.</p>