<p>I have heard other top schools like MIT are so competitive once you get there that students try to sabotage each other. I am looking for an environment in which students help each other or at least don't hurt each other. I am looking for study groups and friendly people :> </p>
<p>Here’s a bit of advice that will make your whole college search go better: Whoever it was you “heard” that from is not a reliable source of information. At all. In the future, you can safely disregard whatever it is that person is telling you.</p>
<p>Anyway, that’s not true of MIT, it’s not true of Penn, it’s not true of other “top schools” in general. and I doubt it was ever even true of the couple of colleges where there IS some urban folklore that students have sometimes sabotaged each other. (Generally, rumors like that are limited to people taking huge science survey courses that are necessary to meet medical school admissions requirements, and which are usually graded on a curve. I’m not saying any of those rumors are true; only that when you hear them, it is always about pre-meds. Part of that is because students who aren’t pre-meds tend to hate taking classes with pre-meds because they raise the anxiety level a lot, and tend to focus on what grade they are getting rather than what they are learning. So people make up nasty stories about pre-meds.) </p>
<p>Students at Penn and MIT, and every other elite institution, tend to be pretty competitive, but not in that way. People help each other, a lot, all the time. They do it because they are the same kind of person you are, and they do it because they learn more that way. Don’t worry about that. </p>
<p>My S is in SEAS at Penn. People help each other A LOT. Yes everyone strives to be the best but not at the expense of their friends. 
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<p>In my major people were very willing to help each other out. The reason you would call us competitive is that a lot of students hold themselves to really high standards.</p>
<p>MIT is known to be a very hard school but it is the same way. In fact, people have told me that it is so hard that everyone is humbled by the experience and learns to work together. </p>
<p>Okay this makes a lot more sense and calms my nerves a lot. Sounds like just what I’m looking for Thanks to each of you!!</p>