<p>During sophomore year, my computer science teacher instilled within me a love for CS. She was a great teacher and always kept classes fun, occasionally telling us amusing stories about her/her students' adventures through life. However, she also led me to believe that MIT was not the place I wanted to be. One of her stories was about a student of hers that attended MIT. Her student described the CS department as killer-competitive, where the students were hacking/ruining each other's computers, sabotaging each other's projects, stealing each other's code, etc in order to stay on the upper half of the curve. Now, I'm all for a little bit of friendly competition, but I'm not the type of person who would go around hacking other people's computers (or anything unethical, really) just to give my grades a boost. So, by the end of the class period, I decided MIT was definitely not a college I wanted to attend.</p>
<p>Fast forward to junior year, my love for CS has soared. I'm totally intent on majoring in CS. Now on the lookout for colleges I'd like to attend, I browse through a few college sites, most of which list MIT as one of the best CS schools around. I decided, despite my aversion to the school, to research a bit more about MIT. After doing said research, I started to fall in love with the school. The spirit of collaboration? Sitting on the lounge floor working together? P-set...parties? It was starting to sound like my dream school (as nerdy as it sounds--yes, the idea of figuring out how to do hard math/science problems with a group of friends excites me). </p>
<p>Who should I believe? My CS teacher was one of my favorite teachers, and I respect her immensely. However, I'm starting to believe that her student was over-exaggerating things, or that this took place during another time in MIT history (my CS teacher had been a CS teacher for a very long time when I had her). My only other thought would be (since the things I read were all about MIT in general) that most of the MIT students are very collaborative but CS majors aren't.</p>
<p>Can any current/graduated MIT students share their thoughts on this subject (especially any CS majors)?</p>
<p>I didn’t major in CS, but I never encountered anything even remotely close to what you are describing. I didn’t experience anything like it in the one CS course I took, and I never heard a whisper of anything like it from any of my numerous friends in CS, with whom I spoke about classes frequently. You’d think they’d have mentioned things like people hacking into their homework, wouldn’t you?</p>
<p>Also, it sounds like you are receiving third-hand information. I think you could discount the stories you are hearing from your teacher without at all changing your high opinion of her as a person. I have no idea what her other student was talking about, but that doesn’t mean I in any way think lowly of your teacher from reading your post. She was just passing on someone else’s stories which seem misguided/outdated/inaccurate for whatever reason.</p>
<p>I’m not an MIT student, to be clear, but I do come from a school with a strong EECS program, and the consensus is strongly that collaboration is the name of the game for CS. </p>
<p>Realistically, at a top school, even for talented programmers the CS projects involving actual programming are very time-consuming, and the projects are usually intended to foster collaboration. </p>
<p>Even without having attended MIT’s program, I can by default say its culture is probably much less competitive, and the attitude in top EECS programs is more to share the pain than to gain cheap points by screwing each other over. </p>
<p>That’s the premed culture stereotype, which is also probably lessened at MIT (since I’d bet someone who takes on that cheap mentality would be eager to choose an easier school that yields a fast track to med school).</p>
<p>The best way to make it thru MIT is to work in a collaborative type environment with your classmates. You learn more hearing the class material again from your classmates in discussions and you presenting it sometimes. </p>
<p>Never heard of people “stealing” anything like that from other students.</p>
<p>I’m going to be a senior in CS. I have also been a lab assistant for two of the undergrad CS courses, and I have taught an intro to Python course over IAP. And I can tell you that your teacher is absolutely, undoubtedly incorrect.</p>
<p>MIT is an awesome, wonderfully collaborative place to study computer science. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably just jealous :)</p>