<p>Hi everybody,</p>
<p>I am not starting to look at colleges for next year. What is your opinion on the overall atmosphere of these colleges? Are they super competitive, laid-back, nuetral, etc.?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Hi everybody,</p>
<p>I am “NOW” starting to look at colleges for next year. What is your opinion on the overall atmosphere of these colleges? Are they super competitive, laid-back, nuetral, etc.?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I suspect the reason that you haven’t gotten any answers is because you haven’t actually asked a specific enough question.</p>
<p>MIT is in the middle of Cambridge, so it can get a bit smoggy at times, but sometimes, when you’re walking to Tosci’s down Main Street, it smells like Junior mints!</p>
<p>That’s because there’s a Junior mints factory on Main Street! I walked past it every morning on my way to work in the summer. There’s often a big truck outside that’s pumping something inside, and I’ve always wanted to stop the truck driver to ask what in the world he was bringing every Monday :)</p>
<p>And bobby, to answer your question generally, it’s what you as a person make of it. No matter where you go, you’re going to find intense, laid-back, as well as neutral people, and that’s what makes life interesting right? I can tell you that one of the major reasons I chose MIT was because of how little competition I saw the students were experiencing against each other. Everyone is super cooperative on problem sets, studying, etc. I personally think that the workload and amount of time you spend on the extracurricular activities that you love prevents you from having the energy to get competitive, but that’s just me. Go visit the colleges, talk to the students, you’ll get a much better answer that way then posting on the MIT forums, where MIT kids will only know about the atmosphere here ;)</p>
<p>Sylverwing, thanks for the great post. That’s exciting to hear about the cooperation regarding the problem sets. I am thinking about going into computer science, so that will be extremely helpful. Do you have any great things to add about MIT?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Where do I begin? Haha, to prevent this from becoming a diatribe, I think the great things about MIT is how many things are going on at all times (and I mean at all times, quietest hours of campus are like six to eight in the morning?) and how much people love what they do, whether it’s fundraising fifty-grand for a summer camp for kids whose parents have cancer or experimenting on the chemistry of chocolate or building shopping cart vehicles that go down the street at forty miles an hour and almost run you over. You meet all sorts of people with interesting quirks, crazy ideas, and no matter what kind of person you are, you can find your niche somewhere :D</p>
<p>If you go to mitadmissions.org and just look through some of the blog posts written by current students and alumni, you’ll find many more awesome experiences that speak for themselves. It’s a great read, I could spend all day on the page.</p>
<p>i got into MIT EA and one thing that stood out about the atmosphere is that students do not compete against each other but rather work together (like psetting). so, it’s not like most schools where student vs. student but rather students vs. MIT</p>
<p>Sylverwing, I’ll probably apply EA to MIT also now!</p>
<p>tuangpi, thanks for that statement. It’s definitely encouraging.</p>