<p>Ok, MIT is an engineering school...in fact, it is the engineering school..
when we were talking about majors, most prefrosh i talked to during CPW said they were going to major in some type of engineering, 1,2,3,10,16,20 etc...
but it leads to the question how people choose engineering...
i mean most high schools (at least mine) do not have engineering classes (for instance, Mech Eng, Chem E) like science classes ( AP Chem, AP Bio, AP Physics)....
in addition, freshman classes are only the sciences, HASS and calc class and we are required to declare a major by the end of freshman year (or sophomore, but still...). So, do they have prior knowledge or expertise in engineering classes or do they pretty much learn about it while taking the classes?</p>
<p>I think this is a little bit of a dumb question. I was only thinking of doing only Course 7 until I thought 10-B or 20 would also be pretty cool.</p>
<p>I’m glad it was reposted to the main forum. I must have missed it on the other one. I am also curious about this.</p>
<p>My son “thinks” he wants to be an engineer but really doesn’t have a lot of experience to base it on. At MIT you must declare a major after one year of mostly required classes. How do students figure this out.</p>
<p>My belief is that you have to know what people actually do in engineering in two senses (possibly distinct): outside of class and inside class. A good way to find it out is by talking to someone who has actually done engineering about it and seeing if it looks appealing. Unfortunately, liking math and science is hardly a good predictor of liking engineering at all. </p>
<p>As to soomoo, I have seen someone (I think Chris) post that the requirement to declare your major after frosh year is quite loose in the sense that I’m fairly sure you can switch things around.</p>
<p>Further, as I have posted before, often times professors will let you audit a class. I think auditing some engineering would be extremely wise (if not taking the classes and doing all the work) to get a feel, before declaring the major. But as with anything in academics, you only really get to know the nature of something closely after sticking with it for a good bit of time, meaning you could end up being ambivalent about engineering for some time, and then deciding you either like or don’t like it <em>after actually trying to do it</em>. </p>
<p>People who choose engineering often hear about what the fields are like and say it sounds interesting. This is coming from someone whose school is very good for engineering but I would fully imagine a lot less flexible about letting people switch their disciplines around frequently than MIT is. I think some people DO have experience messing around with engineering and doing research though, although in some ways that experience probably pales in comparison with what one can do at a big name school for engineering.</p>
<p>To be perfectly honest, another reason a lot of people do engineering is that they like math and science but know that at least for the theoretical fields, there are fewer tracks available than there are for engineering as far as career. Engineering is one of the few college majors that trains you in things that are somewhat relevant to what you may use if you’re working in industry, and at least a lot of the skills (if not the direct knowledge) may be useful. This is attractive to some as well.</p>
<p>At MIT you CAN’T declare a major before the send of freshman year (unless you claim sophomore standing.) Furthermore, you most certainly don’t HAVE to. Well technically, you do have to declare something, but one of the options is “undesignated.” With a few exceptions, you can also request an advisor in a department you’re considering. So you can spend first semester sophomore year taking a bunch of different courses while chatting with your advisor about what you guess is going to be your most likely choice.</p>
<p>I have a similar concern. During high school I didn’t really get into CS or engineering. However, after seeing the cool projects mit students were creating on campus with EE and CS, I’m now thinking of trying out course 6. I feel like it’s going to be hard getting into that niche since there a lot of students in course 6 who are genius programmers, winning national competitions and such. I only took one computer science course in high school and I’m not sure I’ll be up to it - how hard is it for someone who has no experience to major in 6? How hard is course 6 in general?</p>
<p>I can’t speak to any major beside my own specifically, but MIT in general is very possible for anyone with no experience. It’s obviously hard for everyone, but freshman year is a good equalizer. Yes, some people have accomplished impressive things before arriving, but they are definitely a minority. Most people will be starting at the same basic level.</p>
<p>Mechanical engineering is the only field where experience building stuff will be an advantage, but there are plenty of people who don’t have that experience. Make sure you are good at physics (or at least are capable of mastering the first year of physics.)</p>
<p>Most engineering majors really are just an extension of science. Chem E people have no prior experience in the field, for example. Most engineering majors are like that. </p>
<p>You just try some classes. If you don’t like it, change majors.
Changing majors is no big deal, especially at MIT where they don’t have separate schools.</p>
<p>In addition to everything above – you don’t have to pick a major at the end of freshman year, it’s fairly trivial to switch departments – many of the engineering departments have a class meant to be taken in the spring of freshman year whose purpose is something like an intro to the intro of the department (e.g. 6.00, 16.00, 2.00, maybe others). </p>
<p>These classes are meant to allow students to see if they’re interested in the major, plus teach some basics for people who might not have previous experience.</p>
<p>I understand that you don’t necessarily have to declare a major after freshman year. but if you declare it during sophomore year, would there be a little bit of difficulty in taking classes to finish the major? (just asking for i know nothing)</p>
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<p>That’s great! I think I’m gonna start OCW-ing 'em.</p>
<p>^^^ Strictly speaking, 6.00 isn’t intended to be an introduction to course 6. It’s an introduction to programming course, which will provide instruction for people who have ~no experience in programming (or Python) so that they are caught up and able to succeed in the actual introductory classes, which are 6.01 and 6.02.</p>
<p>There are also a lot of introductory programming courses over IAP for people without a lot of experience coding - I TAed the one in Python, took the one in Java, and currently LA 6.01.</p>
<p>Each CLASS has its own grading policy. Pretty much everything is “curved” in some way. For example, 3.091 is famous for having no curve, but 50 and above is passing. So even if the professor doesn’t do any fancy math or distributions to figure out your grade, they set letter grades to their own scale.</p>
<p>Actually, I think the most useful skill you can learn engineering wise before coming to MIT is HOW TO CODE.</p>
<p>Learning how to code will help you a lot, regardless of your field. MechE’s and ChemE’s do extensive numerical simulations on Matlab. Course 6 classes are very coding intensive in general. Most UROP’s will at least involve some coding on Matlab or Labview etc…</p>
<p>As to the original question, I believe a lot of frosh <em>think</em> they like a certain major (including me), but people switch around a lot. Most people complete GIR’s their first year, so you don’t necessarily have to come in knowing exactly what you want to do. However, it is better to have certain ideas of prospective majors, so that you can take advantage of P/NR to take some of those engineering classes and see if you <em>really</em> like it. That’s something I wish I did. Would have saved me a lot of time.</p>