How hard is MIT (Alums?) ?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>I apologize in advance for rambling; if you don't want to read a long post, simply skip the rest and tell me: if you went to MIT (or know someone who goes), how much does the average student study?
I really like the idea of MIT- the culture seems pretty cool, and I think I'd fit right in. However, I'm scared that if I went, that I'd never have time for any fun and would constantly have to study. Now, don't get me wrong- I'm not at all lazy, and I can work really, really hard when I have to. I just don't want to have to constantly work hard. I'd be fine working 12 hour days every weekday, just as long as I could have weekends
The sciences have always come pretty naturally to me- I don't do anything in my AP Physics and Chem classes in my mildy competitive school (6 national merit scholars out of a class of 497). Calc BC, however, is a mofo. I screwed up my second six weeks grade and, unless I get a ~96 on the final, I'm getting a B.</p>

<p>What were your experiences with MIT (or what you've heard)?</p>

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<p>This is probably not the response you want, but if MIT accepts you its because they know you can handle the academics, and also they have accepted you b/c of your EC's and they will most likely want you to continue some or most of them. So, I think, you will have to work hard, but not all of the time, b/c they want you to have fun, plus how would it look to visiting students that see only kids in their dorms studying all day long. (Note: I am not applying to MIT, and I do not know that much about MIT besides the general stereotypes/facts, but I think I am probably right here)</p>

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<p>MIT is a challenging place. I would say 12 hour days are the norm here. Last semester, I pulled 20 hour days during the weekday and did NOTHING on weekends. This year, I pull 14 hour days during the week and work during the day (party at night) on the weekends...so it evens out. Also, I do a *few extracurriculars so that sucks up some of my time. You should have some time to party if you plan it well.</p>

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<p>"plus how would it look to visiting students that see only kids in their dorms studying all day long."</p>

<p>ahh the lie that is CPW...ummm, who said that?</p>

<p>Seriously, though, the key is time management. MIT is hard. Very few people would dispute that. But if you split the work up right, you can almost always have free time when you want (or need) it. Procrastinate, and you may not. You knew that though.</p>

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<p>this may sound stupid to those of you that know the answer, but what does CPW mean?</p>

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<p>It's "campus preview weekend" for admitted students in April.</p>

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<p>Yea sorry about that...people at MIT tend to speak only in numbers and acronyms. ;)</p>

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<p>Everybody who wants to go to MIT should read the book "The Idea Factory" by Pepper White. It's from a graduate-student's perspective, but it does encapsulate the kind of workload that you would expect. One interesting tidbit - MIT undergraduates are often times more capable and harder working than the MIT graduate students (with the exception, of course, of the MIT grad students who had themselves went to undergrad at MIT). </p>

<p>In a nutshell, the general MIT experience is that it's hard. Damn hard. It's just a very grueling school with an endless stream of work. Pepper White details the 'nerd' culture where it's seemingly cool (or at least acceptable) to go for weeks without showering and do nothing but study. </p>

<p>Now about the whole CPW thing, or about the general image that is portrayed to visiting students, White has something to say about that. MIT is one of the few places where prospective students actually get heckled while walking around the campus with sinister references to endless problem sets and all-night study-fests. It is definitely a feature of MIT culture not to pussy-foot its tough reputation. If anything, MIT seems to be proud of the fact that it is so difficult.</p>

<p>For the most part, I would say that MIT's ' culture of difficulty' is something distinctive and positive. The easiest way to get into MIT graduate school is to do MIT undergrad. And graduating from MIT definitely opens doors to many kinds of jobs. The only truly negative part of the MIT experience is that MIT tends to hurt you specifically when it comes to law school and med-school admissions, which tend to be tremendously GPA driven, and don't really seem to care that MIT is a difficult school that gives out lots of low grades. Case in point - I think that the quality of MIT and Princeton premeds are roughly the same, yet 90% of all Princeton premeds who apply to medical school get into at least one, whereas only 74% of all MIT premeds will get admitted into at least one. It's simply more difficult to pull high grades while still doing all the EC-work necessary to get into med-school if you go to MIT than if you go to Princeton, where grades tend to be higher and the workload tends to be less (hence giving you more spare time to do EC's).</p>

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<p>Sakky,</p>

<p>That was incredibly insightful.</p>

<p>Thanks for the info. I still like MIT anyway and I hope I'm admitted RA. Assuming you're an undergrad student there, do you know kirupa? (EECS, Baker's)</p>

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<p>What do you mean by 12/14 hour days? Classes included, right?</p>

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<p>I would have to say the hardest part of MIT for me is getting used to nearly constant work. The firehose analogy is pretty good. Simply put this place can be intense at times. Some weeks are worse than others. Some can be pretty easy, while in others, several deadlines might coincide and you might lose some sleep. It isn't necessarily the difficulty of the material that makes this hard, it is the pace and the amount of work that comes with it.</p>

<p>Oh, and by the way, don't rely totally on campus preview weekend to give you a true picture of how it can get here. MIT tries to schedule it around a holiday and some professors lighten up the load.</p>

<p>I must reiterate that this place is awesome. If you get in, you CAN suceed here. It is all about the attitude.</p>

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<p>I just want to post an additional note to this thread - that I sincerely do believe, in comparision to my friends at other colleges, that MIT is really a firehose of work. You find yourself swimming through equations and computer programs and the details of details and proofs, and yes it can be overwhelming but... I think this is extremely important to point out and it was something that I didn't fully understand before I came here - how conducive the environment is to doing the work.
It's almost as if sometimes you're digging yourself deeper into your work because you know it rewarding and in so many ways fun. Often you're not doing work alone but with friends and therefore it is a way to socialize and bond through it all with one another.
Most of the time you genuinely want to learn and as you start to take subjects that interest you, that couldn't been taught by a more enthusiastic prof, that couldn't span so much material anywhere else, you are voluntarily working for yourself.
It's a crazy phenomemon.</p>

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<p>So it's hard work, but it's not like the boring-as-hell high school busy work?</p>

<p>Did you like doing homework in high school?</p>

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<p>Haha, well I always hated homework in high school. Always found it all to be a bunch of busy work. Some of the entry level freshman classes aren't that much better, but once you finally get into your major specific classes, it is awesome. You finally learn why you suffered through all those calculus and other science classes :P. For example, in the entry level electrical engineering course you start out doing basic electricity and magnetism and the course culminates with you having the knowledge to design an AM radio. Kind of neat, eh?</p>

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<p>Very neat. Although I'm not sure how relevant this thread is going to be to me anymore...</p>

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<p>Congrats Uncle Feezus for making a featured discussion!</p>

<p>Yea I think I might stay away from this thread for a while(I.E. until I get in, or more likely until forever :P)</p>

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<p>So I got in EA, and my parents are still trying to convince me to put my finished princeton and harvard apps in the mailbox and not to call up stanford to cancel. They are telling me that harvard, especially, has more name recognition abroad, has a greater endowment and thus likely better faculty and facilities, and has non-math-science-nerds so I can still debate politics with friends. How well-founded are their comments?</p>

<p>Also, my mom is pretty good friends with the parents of the only grad of my high school who is at MIT now. They claim their kid is getting straight As. My sister was in her same class at high school and is now at Harvard, getting grades WAYYY lower than that, even though my sister got higher grades in high school than the girl who is at mit. For this reason, my parents think MIT will be too easy for me. I tell them they are insane. How can I convince them?</p>

<p>My parents have one or two good points. Nevertheless, I am enchanted by the MIT nerd culture and would be thrilled to go there. My parents will let me make the decision, but I want them to agree with me. This may be difficult, considering my mom hates math and science (spanish lit major), and my dad was a history major. Neither of them even takes me seriously when I say I want to study electrical! Anyway, any suggestions would make me very happy. Thanks guys!</p>

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<p>2left4dubya, I would agree that Harvard/Princ. have a more striking name abroad to some of the general population abroad. MIT is not far behind, but more recognized among those associated with engineers and scientists. Heck there are people in the US who never heard of either 3.
But that's besides the point - your employer will certainly know of MIT. </p>

<p>Here's a more important point - when an employer who is hiring a researcher thinks MIT- they know they're getting top-notch quality. So maybe the kid wasn't doing theater and arts as much as research projects in high school. Prehaps they were't as well rounded, but they knew what they wanted. What is far more important to your employer is your education DURING college. This is not to say that H/P/S have poorer educations, but when it comes to math or science, tough and demanding courses cannot be avoided at MIT. They know they're getting a girl/guy who has probably the strongest foundation in problem-solving out of these three schools. You're going to come out as someone with an incredibly firm understanding of math and science more than anything else. Just look at our General Institute Reqs - there is no time for Humanities classes here. And the ones that are Humanities classes are strongly science-based. </p>

<p>My Pyschology prof said it well- he used to teach at Princeton, and there Pyschology fulfills the Science req., but at MIT it fulfills the Humanities req. Pretty ironic, ay? </p>

<p>As for facilities.... you're kidding. MIT has probably the best labatories in existence. Don't you know we wander the basements on random nights and pick up the perfectly good junk left over from the tons of labs - the computers, the equipment. Heck, I used to live in a room overlooking a nuclear reactor every day. </p>

<p>I was talking to a grad student here who went to Yale and liked it very much but admits MIT is more cut for those going into science. Here, from your first year, you can get a small research position in a lab and slowly work your way up. It's called UROP -Undergrad Research Oppurtunities Program. </p>

<p>NO other school has anything like this. This grad was telling me that at Yale it took him painstakingly long to find a Prof who would let him work in a Genetics lab. Here it takes about one email. Theres a whole site dedicated to a bunch of open UROPs for grabs - check it out. What good are facilities anyway if you don't use them? I mean the Grad departments here are the best in their fields - they're bound to be at the "edge of cutting research" as the cliche goes. </p>

<p>As for your Harvard/MIT story, I cannot speak for one situation. Plently of students here motivated in the Humanities take courses at Harvard (it's called cross registering) , because quite literally, MIT has very few classes in these fields. Their "Humanities" are Linguistics, and Poly Sci, which are the first and third in the nation, but you're probably looking for other types of courses as well. </p>

<p>It really comes down to what you want - it sounds to me like you want to go into science and would be really comfortable with the culture here. I'm sure H/P are cool places to be, from what I hear a lot of reading and writing which is mainly unheard of here, but not nearly as much hardcore problem-solving. I also get the impression that their sciences are "soft" in the sense that they are humanities based as well. The really achieved Math majors take Grad majors at places like that - you don't have to resort to that here, Undergrad is challenging enough. </p>

<p>But yes, if you want electrical sci, I suggest MIT. I would say the courses here are unparalleled anywhere in ES.
As for appeasing parents, I was never good at that. I initially had a strong preference for Stanford, but my mother said it was too far away. I'm glad I didn't go. Ivy league schools give me the impression of a more high-school-like enviroment (I think this may be due to the fact that MIT doesnt rank so people help each other out), more typically college - full of a sport culture and all kinds of superficialities. On any random walk through harvard sq., I hear talking about abortion and politics - people just trying to make themselves sound smart. There is lots of gestures, forming ideas that evaporate. At MIT, we build rollercoasters and human gyroscopes during orientation... um can you compare?
Well good luck.</p>

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<p>From what i read here I really begin to understand why MIT is the best for me.
I knew it was best , but i did not not why :)
now i really like it. and i hope to be accepted regular action.</p>

<p>Today, a classmate of mine received an acceptance e-mail form harvard, but I he is not science oriented.</p>

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<p>As the title implies, I'm currently a freshman at MIT. So far, I've found MIT to be a very challenging place, but with many opportunities for help in order to succeed as well.</p>

<p>If you'd like to discuss this further, please visit my MIT Blog at <a href="http://blogs.mit.edu/cappaert/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://blogs.mit.edu/cappaert/&lt;/a> and contact me through there. I'm open to questions about anything, from admissions to fraternities to homework to financial aid (I work in the Fin Aid office, so I have PLENTY of info).</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>