<p>Hey everyone. Just wanted to check if anyone on cc had experience with or knowledge of the MRC learning community. How many people normally get admitted/how difficult is it to get in? I know it's in mojo (huuuuge plus), but are there normally and stigmas attached to it? I'm really interested in getting into mojo, and the concept of the learning community interests me, but I don't want to end up with a hall of bookworms. Just curious if it'd take away from meeting people freshman year (and doing intramurals wih my hall, etc). Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>If you want to be involved in research, MRC is a good thing to apply to. However, I would highly advise against anyone applying to a learning community just for location. Research requires ~6-12 hours per week on your project as well as community meetings and a class. There are approximately 120 freshmen in the community.</p>
<p>If you are doing just to get into MoJo, it is the WORST idea in the world. </p>
<h1>1. You WILL be with bookworms. You HAVE to commit to 6-12 hours of research per week AND attend seminars discussing research AND present/discuss your research sometimes. The people in it will be devoted to their research and some will be not very social.</h1>
<h1>2. MoJo doesn’t have a lot of freshman outside of the MRC, thus you will NOT have that great of a freshman year experience as Markely people do. In other words, you might HATE your freshman year from what I can tell by your post (don’t want bookworms, want to have fun with people in your hall)</h1>
<h1>3. MRC is very time consuming, as you can tell, it will take away time from your social life. If you are doing it just for MoJo, you will absolutely hate freshman year as you will feel like you are wasting your time doing something you don’t like and living with people who are less social, not that hey aren’t social, its just that they don’t have much free time and you won’t either.</h1>
<p>Would anyone recommend the MRC?</p>
<p>I would recommend MRC for someone who is interested in participating in research their freshman year. While I believe that gunit5’s description is overstated, for someone who only applies to live in Mojo, many of the points are valid. What I notice to be most inaccurate from the post is the notion that everyone is a bookworm. True, the rowdy freshman year experience (of Markley) is not as prevalent, Mojo and the MRC are not full of antisocial bookworms.</p>
<p>Acceptance rate last year was about 15-25%, better make your essays good. I didn’t get in last year, but it sounds like my freshman year would have been a LOT different if I did get in, but whether for better or worse I don’t know. I did want to do biomed research though, I think that was the most competitive field and so harder to get in.</p>
<p>When I posed the question I didn’t mean for it to be just a means of getting into mojo. I’ll be doing (or trying to do) research freshman year regardless, so having a program that includes my favorite dorm (aside from like north quad which isn available to me anyway) sounded great. I just wasnt sure if I’d be missin out on the freshman social experience if I did indeed get into MRC. Can you apply for the MRC and reject it later if you get it, or is it binding?</p>
<p>Mgoblue1, these Living/ Learning Community threads often have discussion in this direction because there are many people in the communities that just participate for the location. It was not a personal attack, but just a heads up that people looking to join just for location may not have a good year. I can say, though that everyone I know of who came in for research had a great time this year. </p>
<p>In terms of ‘rejecting’ you admission into the community; I’m sure it is possible, you would probably just need to talk to the director of the community. I do know that at least one person decided half way through the year to drop out of the community. That person had to leave the community and was re-assigned a room elsewhere. What that could mean is that housing would find any available room to put you in.</p>
<p>Finally, If you truly are interested in research, I would also recommend applying to UROP. UROP is the ‘parent’ organization of MRC which also allows students to be envolved with research projects, however UROP is not residental. If accepted to MRC, your UROP application is automatically dropped.</p>
<p>I was told by someone living in Mo-Jo that it will be ALL freshmen beginning this fall. So that will make it a lot better from that perspective.</p>
<p>jelp- I’ve heard that rumor a couple of times over the last few months. It appears to be partially correct. Based upon what I have seen, I believe the following is what will be happening next year;</p>
<p>5th Floor: WISE (Women in Science and Engineering)
4th Floor: 1/2 split between Wise and MRC, 1/2 eRes (Entrepreneurs in residence)
3rd Floor: MRC
2nd Floor Non LLC Freshmen
1st Floor Non LLC Freshmen</p>
<p>This is my best guess. Just for reference, though; 1st and 2nd floors combined only have ~35 total rooms. If eRes is not living in Mojo, that would then open up another ~ 40 rooms.</p>