<p>I'm wondering how much time people generally have in their schedules to take non-required courses. Right now I'm pretty sure I'm going to declare something technical as my major (engineering of some sort; not sure which), but I don't know what I want my HASS concentration to be, because I'm interested in History, Lit, and German. Since I can't concentrate in all 3, can someone tell me how many non-required courses people generally have room to take? Should I expect to be taking just the GIRs and requirements for my major in my time at MIT?</p>
<p>why don’t you wait until sunday and you’ll have plenty of people answer your questions once you are in</p>
<p>For most engineering majors, you’ll have 4 electives - for most science majors, it’s around 6. This is under the ideal of taking 4 classes/term and testing out of nothing. If you can test out of things or handle more classes, you’ll have even more room :)</p>
<p>Thanks Piper! :)</p>
<p>lol at a90sabrinita</p>
<p>^ Yeah, I don’t get a90sabrinita’s response. This board exists to answer questions, and the question posted was perfectly reasonable.</p>
<p>Well depends on how many classes you’re willing to take each term.</p>
<p>I actually have taken a consistent 5-class courseload through MIT (with the exception of this semester, where I’m attempting 6 - we’ll see how long that lasts), and I had a huge amount of time to pursue electives.</p>
<p>Since electives are supposed to be fun, if you figure out once you start taking classes here how much work you can handle you can easily tack on one or two classes on top of your required science or engineering classes. : )</p>
<p>Does it cost more to take 5 classes? I’m not sure how tuition works at MIT but I know that the University of Michigan charges per credit hour if you exceed a certain limit.</p>
<p>and Chris, having read some of your blog posts and seeing that you were a cross-admit to a crazy number of really selective schools, I’ll just say that while you might be able to take 5 classes, I’m not sure that’ll be an option for me. 
(Although I certainly might still try at some point).</p>
<p>Nope, tuition is tuition no matter how many classes you take.</p>
<p>(Except for summer. Then it is by unit.)</p>
<p>Do you mean cost in terms of money or cost in terms of the number of gray hairs on your head and the years taken from your life? (I’m kidding. Mostly.) :)</p>
<p>The amount of elective room an engineering major has varies by department – aero/astro and chem E have less elective room than civil/environmental, for example. And mechanical engineering has a track with fewer required classes (“2A”).</p>
<p>What Oasis said is generally the case. If you are able to get advanced standing (not credit) in some subjects with AP credit, then you’ll be able to declare a major a semester earlier, and have room for more electives. You can also take full classes during IAP (my son took a Relativity course during the one month of IAP) and this allowed room for an extra elective this semester. On average, though, he tells me most kids take four classes each semester (including one elective).</p>
<p>Mollie, if I eat healthily and exercise, can I make up for the electives I take?</p>
<p>ack, aero/astro’s one of the majors that really interests me. Maybe I can use IAP like neuron39 said or something, because I’m really not coming in with any AP credit except elective credit. >.></p>
<p>Ask me in twenty years, I suppose. :)</p>
<p>Aero/astro’s tough, because it actually requires more classes than most majors do, and any given semester is fairly full. I wouldn’t, for example, advise taking five classes either semester of sophomore year, when aero/astro majors are taking Unified Engineering (pro tip: any course at MIT referred to by name rather than number is probably bad news). Junior year and senior year are a little more flexible. </p>
<p>Of course, as you’ve noticed, IAP exists for having fun, and you can take classes up at Harvard during the summer – they offer a bunch of interesting electives.</p>
<p>Is cross-registration at Harvard a common thing? I get the feeling that I may be permanently shunned from MIT for taking a class at Harvard :)</p>
<p>It’s not uncommon, especially for classes that aren’t offered at MIT. It can be tough to fit into an MIT schedule, because taking a class up at Harvard generally means you can’t take one during the previous hour at MIT (because classes end five minutes before the hour), nor the next hour at MIT (because classes start five minutes after the hour). So the travel time can become a big problem.</p>
<p>It will probably be more common to cross-register at Harvard in the future than it has been in the past – this is the first year Harvard adopted a more MIT-like schedule, so in the past, people who took classes at Harvard had to take finals during IAP and other unsavory things related to scheduling.</p>
<p>MIT students don’t shun Harvard. The feeling is something more like a mixture of envy for the A’s that fall like snowflakes and pity for everything else.</p>
<p>If aero/astro requires more classes than most majors, is it still set up so you can take 4 classes per semester and graduate in 4 years, or do they expect some semester to have 5 classes?</p>
<p>Also, does it cost more money to take classes for credit during IAP? How about gray hairs? ;)</p>
<p>Aero/astro has a diagram on their website [url=<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/aeroastro/academics/undergrad/curriculum.html]here[/url”>http://web.mit.edu/aeroastro/academics/undergrad/curriculum.html]here[/url</a>] detailing the classes students have to take. </p>
<p>I know more about the aero/astro path than I do about many others (because my husband was course 16), but I’m not an expert – still, I see all 48-unit semesters with three spaces for electives when I write it out. I think I am understanding correctly when I see they actually require four electives, so I guess that would be one semester with 5 classes (or an IAP/summer with one class, or UROP for credit one semester). This would be with 18.03 (diff eq) taken in freshman year, though – which either requires taking 18.02 (multivariable calc) and 18.03 in the same semester (not particularly recommended), taking 18.01A/18.02A (combination single-variable and multivariable calc) first semester into IAP, or getting advanced standing credit for 18.01 (single-variable calc) and starting freshman year with 18.02.</p>
<p>Class during IAP generally isn’t too stressful, because that’s the only thing you have on your plate during that month. Still, IAP classes have to meet quite a bit more per day than a semester-long class, since one month is shorter than a 14-week semester, and it can be really nice not to have any academic commitments between Christmas and the beginning of February.</p>
<p>IAP classes don’t cost money, and it doesn’t cost more to take more than 4 classes per semester. Summer classes are the only classes that cost extra.</p>
<p>Thanks for typing all that out, Mollie. </p>
<p>Random kind of unrelated question: will you be at CPW at all? :)</p>
<p>Haha, did it make any sense, though? (For what it’s worth, no matter how confusingly I wrote it, my husband confirms that I am correct in my reasoning: only one five-class semester is required.)</p>
<p>The cheerleading squad is thinking of doing a CPW exhibition, so if we do, I will definitely be at CPW. If we’re not, I will most likely be at the admissions office’s Meet the Bloggers party, though with Lulu and Laura both graduated, I am feeling a little too old to go.</p>
<p>^ Mollie, you are not too old to go! You are practically the face of MIT on Collegeconfidential.
:-)</p>