<p>Interesting thread. Don’t have much to add except that my son loves MIT (he’s a freshman) and loves his friends there. He’s a math major (possible double major with management) and a super extroverted, non-geeky leader type. His friends look to him for social life and he looks to them (especially the IMO winners, ha-ha) for help with his upper division math classes. :-)</p>
<p>It’s definitely an intense place. I think the competition comes from within; you know, wanting to keep up with the other students. I think they call it “hosing”. (I’m taking XXX classes and doing XXX. Oh yeah, well I’m doing blah, blah, blah)</p>
<p>MIT is always trying to address this. And there are kids like my son who just buck that trend. His social life has been on overdrive and he’s trying to find that balance with academics. :-)</p>
<p>One of my favorite things about MIT is that they don’t give grades first semester freshman year, and students can’t fail any classes freshman year.</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about Harvard since my son was not interested in it, so I can’t help you there except that they’re more generous with their need-based aid than MIT is! :-)</p>
<p>Mathmom,</p>
<p>Loved your comments and so glad your son ended up at CMU. It seems like an amazing school!</p>