<p>Hi! I'm a senior applying to MIT :) I've read up on the computer science and molecular bio major and would like to know if anyone has/can share their experience in the major. I understand that you take classes in biology and in computer science, but I was just wondering how the two specifically come together (sorry if this is a stupid question, haha). I enjoy both CS and bio so Im pretty interested in 6-7 and would like to learn more in anyone would be kind enough to share!</p>
<p>I assume lidusha will see this and be able to answer questions on 6-7 to your heart’s content, but I’m happy to talk about the biology department, if you have any specific questions on that side.</p>
<p>I know a couple of 6-7’s here, although I’m not a biology person myself…I’m 18-C which is mostly a mix of 18 and 6-3, so I can help answer some CS questions if you have any.</p>
<p>Hey! I am 6-7 and 18. I am a senior this year.</p>
<p>My view on computational biology is that you can approach it from three perspectives: biology, computer science, or math, and it’s important to get to see all three during your undergrad.</p>
<p>In 6-7 you take most of the core classes from course 7 and most of the core classes from course 6-3. The downside of a lot of core classes is that you have to take a lot of very large classes that are graded on a curve (average is a B or sometimes in the biology department a C+, one standard deviation above average is an A or sometimes in the biology department a B+). I have taken I think three non-humanities classes that had fewer than 100 people in it, and I’m pretty sure those three had at least 60.</p>
<p>I think I’ve gotten a good, deep understanding of the parts of computer science I’m interested in (algorithms and software engineering), and a wide but shallow perspective of biology. But that might just be a difference between how the biology department and the computer science department do things, and maybe a difference in how much you can really cover in just four years.</p>
<p>I do not like biology at MIT, and if I could do things over I would stay as far away as possible. Some of my professors have been wonderful, absolutely wonderful, but some of my professors and TAs and all of my advisors and UROP advisors in the biology department were straight up mean. One exam review session comes to mind in which we couldn’t answer any of the TA’s questions. I don’t remember what he said but it did not feel good. My course 7 academic advisor stood me up for our first meeting; our second meeting she looked at my transcript and told me my grades sucked, grad school wasn’t much of an option, oh look you have a UROP so that’s better, I guess, I cried, and that was it. Then she dropped me and now I have an adopted academic advisor in course 20, even though I am not in course 20. (Luckily we get a second advisor in course 6, and mine has been absolutely wonderful to me.)</p>
<p>In most of the biology classes I’ve taken my grade was based primarily on very, very time-pressured exams, and that created a lot of stress, and that combined with how important my grades were to graduate school admission (as I was constantly reminded by my UROP and course 7 academic advisors) made it difficult to focus on learning. I felt like there was a big emphasis on details (what was in the lectures and problem sets and on the exam) and very little emphasis on understanding how those details fit together (what you need to know when you graduate). Also, if you’re giving half your class Cs or below, you are preventing half of your class from getting into a top graduate school or any medical school, which they probably would have gotten into if they had gone anywhere else but here. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do if you’re a biology major at MIT and you get mostly Bs and Cs in your biology classes. Go somewhere other than MIT, I guess.</p>
<p>It felt like I was my technical GPA. I couldn’t have a conversation with my UROP advisor or my course 7 academic advisor that didn’t end in tears because my grades sucked, and grades were all they ever wanted to talk about. I feel as though I am an intelligent, hardworking person, but because I’ve gotten Cs, in the biology department I am a slacker and an idiot. I had recurring nightmares after finals week a year ago in which our transcripts got tattooed onto our backs at the end of every semester and I couldn’t wear a two-piece swimsuit.</p>
<p>I have really enjoyed my computer science classes. They are largely project-based, which has been a lot of fun. I think the math classes I’ve taken in probability and theoretical computer science have been particularly useful to me, and I think they greatly improved my understanding of what I was learning in my computer science and biology classes as they apply to computational biology. Math here is also much more chill than biology or even computer science. The classes feel much more like an adventure, with the professors as our guides. Maybe the professors are less stressed about funding and research.</p>
<p>How do the two come together? They don’t, for the most part, at least not in your classes. There are two required classes I’ve taken, evolution and computational biology, which brought them together. Other than that it’s up to you. I had a two-year-long UROP in the biology department and I took a population genetics class at Harvard. I got a view of computational biology from the math perspective from my Harvard population genetics class, I got a view of computational biology from the computer science perspective from my MIT computational biology class, and I got a view of computational biology from the biology perspective from my UROP.</p>
<p>It’s a very young program, and I hope they will be adding more classes specific to computational biology as time goes on. I’m hoping to stay for a Master’s degree to get a little more depth on the biology and computer science sides.</p>
<p>Sorry that was long. Hopefully it was helpful. Maybe Mollie will be able to provide a more positive view of the biology department. I can answer any other, more specific questions you have about 6-7.</p>
<p>Background on me: I started off course 20, then decided on course 7, then decided to become course 6-2. </p>
<p>There were several reasons for this. One, like Lydia, I had some below-B grades, and it seemed this would hurt me a lot in the biology world. Two, I did a biology UROP - which was awesome, I worked on regenerating planaria! - that made me realize that it was not quite what I wanted to be doing as a career. Three, course 6 is interesting, flexible in application, and grades don’t matter as much - all of which were personally important to me, since the idea I’d had of what I wanted to be had very suddenly changed :)</p>
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<p>I’ll add to this - you can take these classes without being course 6-7. I, in fact, took evolution with Lydia! I really enjoyed the class and how it tied together two subjects that I love. </p>
<p>Learning does not have to be restricted to your major. My advice would be to choose your major based on what makes an interesting career path, then take interesting non-career-path related classes on the side. Whatever this leads you to do is fine :)</p>
<p>I’ll note that I don’t want to sound down on course 7 here. I want to emphasize that this was my own personal experience with what worked well in my life/for my goals/for my prioritization shifts. People can be perfectly happy in course 7 (or, for that matter, hate course 6). Different strokes for different folks, etc.</p>
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Well, I can, but I don’t want you to feel like I’m negating your experience.</p>
<p>I really enjoyed my classes in the biology department, which is why I went on to a biomedical sciences PhD program and a bio postdoc. I double-majored in biology and neuroscience, and I enjoyed the contrast between my smaller, narrower neuroscience courses and my (generally) larger, broader biology courses. I thought having both approaches was really useful for my education. I also took several smaller upper-division courses in the biology department (several more than I was required to take) that were the best classes I took at MIT.</p>
<p>I got a mix of B’s and A’s (mostly B’s) in my technical courses, and graduated with a 4.4(/5.0) because I took about three classes’ worth of UROP for credit. I loved my UROP, and my research history plus the letter of recommendation from my faculty advisor (who was also my biology departmental advisor) was a substantial factor in my admission to graduate school. I had a 4.2 or a 4.3 when I applied to graduate programs, and nobody ever brought up my grades in interviews.</p>
<p>Wow! Thanks for all the responses!
@ lidusha That was definitely helpful, thanks for taking the time to write it. Dreaming of tattooed transcripts sounds horrible 
But you’re still considering staying at MIT for grad school, so you don’t regret course 6-7, right? Would you do it again if you had the chance to start over? For class sizes, is it correct that core classes are usually quite large and only higher level classes have smaller sizes? Is that generally true at top universities? </p>
<p>@piperxp MIT UROPs sound so exciting and super helpful for figuring out what to do in the future :)</p>
<p>@molliebatmit I’m glad you enjoyed MIT biology!!! I guess everyone has different experiences!</p>
<p>I have a general question about classes at MIT. I know that not everyone is a “genius”, and that people are “normal”, but with so many classmates who have done olympiads and research in high school, is it possible for someone normal to do decently in classes? I haven’t gotten into MIT and the chances are slim, haha, but I’m just curious. For example, I enjoy computer science class, and I think writing programs is lots of fun, but if I do computer science at MIT, won’t I be in classes with a bunch of genius programmers? How would it even be possible to survive, especially if classes are graded with curves! HAHAH I don’t know, that’s always just been a question at the back of my mind.</p>
<p>Also, how do people go to decent med schools with the harsh bio curves? I know of MIT people going to Stanford/Harvard med school, are they just straight up geniuses? LOL</p>
<p>Yay! Thanks everyone! This forum is so helpful :)</p>
<p>Core classes are generally either large or absolutely massive while the size of upper division classes varies a lot by major. Because Course 6 has a ridiculous number of majors many core upper division Course 6 classes are still quite large. Core classes in other popular majors can also be large. More advanced classes or courses in less popular majors will be smaller though. The upper division math classes I’ve taken have had between 8 and 40 students for example.</p>
<p>You don’t need to be a genius to do well at MIT. In almost all departments the skills required to do well are pretty different from the skills required to do well in that subject in high school (many EECS classes don’t require lots of programming). Departments also vary a lot in how strict they are with grading. While some like bio may grade on harsh curves (although I’m still skeptical there are many classes with median grades of C) others are much more lenient. In the upper division math classes (18.102, 18.112, and 18.152) I’ve taken I think large majorities of the classes got As. The one upper division EECS class I took (6.207) was graded harsher but still like half the class got As or A-s.</p>
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<p>Absolutely.</p>
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<p>I had never touched code (and did not understand computers at all) when I first stepped foot at MIT. I was definitely surrounded by genius programmers (or just programmers who got started in, like, middle or high school), and at times that was tough. But if you get into MIT, you are able to get through it, I promise you. We all come here to be surrounded by other very smart people to learn from them :)</p>
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Just to clear up a misconception – the classes are not curved down (the highest scorer sets the maximum grade), they’re curved up (class average is set at something, often a B). Curves are a good thing at MIT, and you wouldn’t necessarily want a class to be straight-scaled.</p>
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I would not say my MIT classmates who went on to Harvard Medical School were, on the whole, straight-up geniuses. Smart people who worked hard, certainly. </p>
<p>The grading for some of the larger core classes in biology is tougher than the grading for upper-division classes. It’s not as though all classes you ever take as a biology major are graded harshly. I was pretty close to class average in most of my biology classes, including the cores, and I never ended up with a grade below a B.</p>
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I disagree. I do much better when I know where I stand. I also do much better when I do not feel like I am competing against my peers at MIT for my grades and my future. Even if it is still true without the curve, it’s nice not to have the constant reminder after every single exam. Biochemistry was the hardest biology class I’ve taken, but knowing the cut-offs from the start helped me focus on my own studying instead of constantly comparing myself to my peers, and I felt so much more confident going into exams. A massive amount of stress removed.</p>
<p>Grading on a curve is also against MIT policy, despite the fact that many professors who teach core classes do it.</p>
<p>And biochemistry is the only course 7 class I’ve taken that was not graded on a curve, which is disgusting.</p>
<p>Yeah, I also hated the curves in classes and never knowing where I stood. It made term more stressful than it had to be.</p>
<p>That said, it also seems hard for classes to quite know how consistent they are without years of being taught. The best example of a non-curved class I can think of - 6.004 - has been around for decades in a pretty steady state, so the staff can predict outcomes better.</p>
<p>Are there really classes graded on strict curves where a set percentage of the class get As and Bs? My understanding is that classes where grade cutoffs are adjusted based on class performance but not according to a set formula are much more common and are not prohibited.</p>
<p>I haven’t taken any classes with strict curves, but in quite a few of my classes, my professors would say that they would wait until the end of the semester to see how the class did overall, and use that to decide how to assign grade cut-offs. This can be stressful for the same reasons lidusha mentioned.</p>
<p>About 6.004 - I enjoyed the class a lot, but I feel like I didn’t get as much out of the exams as I did in a class like 6.046, which was curved in the sense that there were no predetermined cut-offs.</p>
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Yes. That exactly. Specifically, the normal curve, centered at a B or sometimes a C+: [File:Standard</a> deviation diagram.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_deviation_diagram.svg]File:Standard”>File:Standard deviation diagram.svg - Wikipedia) If it is centered at a B, which is what is usually done, 68% of the class gets a B, 16% gets an A, and 16% gets a C or below. If it is centered at a C+, a little less than half the class gets Bs or above and a little more than half the class gets Cs or below. (We don’t have +/- grades, so when I say C I mean every variety of C.)</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_deviation_diagram.svg]File:Standard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_deviation_diagram.svg%5DFile:Standard){kind=link}
<p>The normal curve is used in almost all core course 7 classes and at least one core course 6 class (6.006).</p>
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Well, to each his own. I strongly preferred curved classes. One of the few straight-scaled courses I took, 9.24, required a 90% average for an A. I was considerably less comfortable and more stressed out trying to maintain that level of perfection than I was taking curved classes where consistent 70%/~class average scores came out to around a B. In a straight-scaled class, the entire class can get a C. </p>
<p>FWIW, my experience was not with strict bell curve distributions, but with cutoffs being drawn around approximately natural breakpoints in the grade distribution, as shravas is describing.</p>
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<p>I felt like the tests were more of a formality compared to the actual building we got out of the labs. It was the labs I loved, and they felt like the primary component of the course by far to me. But YMMV!</p>
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<p>This aspect was always voodoo to me - I’m not sure how cutoffs were decided. Friends who have TA’d have said that there usually aren’t obvious buckets, so they’re really deciding between, say, an 83 and an 84.</p>
<p>Regardless of which happened, though, not knowing my standing until the end of term was always very stressful.</p>