<p>Does anyone know how the humanities are at MIT?</p>
<p>Awesome, just like everything else :)</p>
<p>And the classes are smaller, and they get higher student rankings in the course evaluations than technical classes :-P</p>
<p>We have to take a lot of them...? </p>
<p>I don't know, what sort of info are you looking for here?</p>
<p>I guess I was wondering about the quality of the humanities classes at MIT.</p>
<p>my own experience with them has been pretty good, but it helps if you take the time to find classes that are interesting to you and/or taught by good profs. last spring i had an excellent professor for class called "cultural performances of asia" and have been waiting for him to come back from sabbatical so i can take more of his classes. i've also had experiences with fairly ok classes taught by obnoxious profs. as someone who enjoys writing and asian studies and gender studies and dance and anthropology and french and spanish and STS and...um, i like humanities. i've got enough classes on the "want to take before i graduate" list that i wouldn't feel the need to look elsewhere, unless i had a sudden hunger to learn hindi.</p>
<p>i guess i can't really comment on the <em>quality</em>, not having anything to judge them against except high school classes. they're probably a bit short on the writing-intensive, but you can find classes that make you read and write gobs, if you like.</p>
<p>As far as language goes - what are the classes like? I'm told that they're immersion-style, and that you can switch easily between classes with the professor's approval (I have some experience with a language, but it's good in some ways, crappy in others, so I don't know where I should be). Is this true? Any advice as far as figuring out which level to take?</p>
<p>Do the language/culture houses in New House tend to have a lot of that language spoken, or is it mostly a culture thing (I don't think I'll end up in New House, but it would be a good place to practice, if people try to speak English as little as possible)?</p>
<p>hmm. Imagine Massachusetts Institute of Humanities..</p>
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Any advice as far as figuring out which level to take?
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<p>At least in Spanish, you pick whichever level you think you should be in, then on the first day the professor listens to you speak a little and decides whether or not you belong at that level. (Helps weed out the people who took 4 yrs of high school Spanish and want to start in Spanish I.)</p>
<p>Heh ... yeah. I can speak some common phrases (maybe 50 off the top of my head), but I understand better. Well, it'll all work out in the end. I want to do a MISTI at some point, so that'll definitely improve my German.</p>
<p>Ah cultural houses... German House is trying to speak more German. I haven't heard seen proof that that's suceeding. Then again, it's always been the house with the most lenient speaking requirements. French House can be pretty hardcore, and Spanish House even moreso. Will Russian House exist next year? It kind of disbanded first semester...</p>
<p>One thing that is nice is that it gives you a dorm of live-in study partners :) Or you could seek out fluent students anywhere else. Whichever.</p>
<p>"they're probably a bit short on the writing-intensive, but you can find classes that make you read and write gobs, if you like."</p>
<p>Oh man, like 21H.504, East Asia in the World 1500-2000. Gobs and gobs. That being said, not all CIs are created equal...</p>