<p>MY son is looking at MIT, Harvard, and Princeton for undergrad mechanical engineering. He is both a techie type and an arts (music, theater, creative writing) type. He would rather not take another history class for the rest of his life, but he is coming out of a small, artsy, nurturing highschool where he is a crucial member of just about every music ensemble. Opinions???</p>
<p>If he intends to do engineering, there is no place better to do it than MIT (my Harvard, Yale, and Princeton interviewers all conceded this point during my interviews when I applied - I applied stating that I wanted to be a chemical engineer). In fact, Harvard just started a reciprocal library borrowing privilege program with MIT where students from either institution can borrow from the other’s libraries largely because Harvard is seeking to expand access to engineering books and text for its fledgling engineering department.</p>
<p>We have a vibrant arts community - my freshmen ex-roommate who still lives down the hall from me turned down New England Music Conservatory to come here, and after being Concertmaster of MIT’s Symphony Orchestra after his second semester, he switched to doing chamber ensemble groups and he have been in 5+ groups so far already, playing with a different group of people every semester and varying his style. He really enjoys it and finds it a great counterbalance to his work. He is double-majoring in Music at MIT, and you’ll find that Music is a surprisingly large academic department at MIT, one of the biggest in course 21 (Humanities) with 15 or 17 full-time professors (I’m not sure the precise number, but it’s in that ballpark). We also have many theater groups, but I’m not as knowledgeable about those so I will leave it for others to comment.</p>
<p>If your son ends up wanting to do pure science though, then there may be a bit of a contention. Princeton has great pure science programs in mathematics and physics, for example. Otherwise, MIT is almost the clear choice.</p>
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<p>that’s so true.</p>
<p>lol…you also talked about this during CPW lol</p>