Engineering at Harvard and Yale

Parents Forum
21

<p>I wanted to address your concern that MIT won’t be ‘social’ enough for your son.</p>

<p>The greatest thing about MIT housing is that it can be whatever you want it to be. I live on a hall where someone’s door is always open and someone is always hanging out in the lounge. If I can’t sleep at 3 am (or, more likely, need a break from working on my pset), I can walk into the hallway and there will probably be at least two people chatting that I can join. Each day, when I return to my room, it genuinely feels like I’m coming home.</p>

<p>I know many, many people that are not just smart but also charismatic, entertaining, hilarious, and even gorgeous. If your son is a ‘true engineer’, as you say, and he comes to MIT, he will be surrounded by other true engineers that appreciate that part of him deeply. I have never felt quite as comfortable or quite as much as I belonged anywhere but MIT.</p>

<p>Yes, people occasionally comment “but you’re pretty! And normal! You <em>really</em> go to MIT?” but don’t worry about it, we’re as social as you want to be :)</p>

22

<p>We’ve hired a few grads from MIT recently and that’s a typical source for us. I don’t recall hiring anyone from Harvard or Yale. This is for software engineering.</p>

23

<p>“true” engineer ==> MIT</p>

<p>physics major ==> toss-up</p>

24

<p>I like the point about going where engineering is “mainstream”. I think this is why the 3-2 programs fail to turn out many engineers in the LACs. There is a culture of much needed support where engineering is a focus that does not exist where it is not a focus in my experience.</p>