<p>Hi, I have a few questions about Campus Preview Weekend! I'm really excited about my recent acceptance to MIT Class of 2017, but with varying money offers from different schools, and the huge commitment of going to such a high-ranked school, I want to make sure I'm comfortable there. I think going to CPW will be perfect.</p>
<p>I was wondering if I should go for all four days? If so, what time should I get there on Thursday and leave on Sunday? If not, what days should I go?</p>
<p>Do parents go? If so, do they stay overnight and all four days too? How long should they stay for?</p>
<p>Thank you! And congrats to all fellow acceptees :)</p>
<p>Congratulations!</p>
<p>They have made CPW 4 days now?</p>
<p>If you sign up, you will have a host and a place to stay. Your parent(s) will need to rent a hotel room and may not be as involved in the various events as you would be. In the end, it depends on your comfort level in traveling alone and whether your parents are very involved in visiting schools with you.</p>
<p>CPW activities take place Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and most leave sometime Sunday morning. There are events going literally 24 hours around the clock, but you’ll get a good experience even if you can only stay 2 days. Not at all necessary to be there first thing Thursday morning. If you can be there Friday morning thru Sunday morning, you’ll still experience plenty! Make sure you make time for closing show on Saturday evening. Parents have separate activities from the students, and you’ll see them very little. We had to arrange meeting times (usually coffee at the Activities Center) just to catch up with our S.</p>
<p>CPW is a lot of fun - and as the other posters have said there are activities all the time - so there is no possible way you will be bored even if you go for all 4 days. I am not sure what you else you could be doing the other days, but I doubt you’ll regret choosing CPW. I think it will help you with your decision a great deal - that is what made me decide to come here. You get paired with a student, so there isn’t much of a marginal dollar cost in spending more days here since you are not paying for food or lodging.</p>
<p>Parents have less fun. There are a few events for parents (about 10% of those for students). I could see parents coming for only two days. It depends on how much your parents want to be involved and lodging in Boston is expensive.</p>
<p>I will echo what others said about CPW. I had to come to CPW a day late last year because of other commitments. You definitely will be fine if you come to CPW a day late or leave a day early but staying for the entire team is probably preferable unless you have something else important during then. If you end up getting accepted at Harvard it’s probably not worth the expense of going to Boston for both admitted students weekends so you might want to visit both during one trip.</p>
<p>CPW isn’t particularly like MIT the rest of the year. There are rarely organized super late events although there are probably people still up. You can see a breakdown of when people say they sleep on a typical night here [The</a> Tech | When are MIT students asleep?](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N59/pressure/sleepinghours/index.htm]The”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N59/pressure/sleepinghours/index.htm). Presumably because of variance substantially more people will be up later on a given night.</p>
<p>As far as I know there is absolutely no pressure to drink during CPW because the administration takes their policy of forbidding providing alcohol to pre-frosh EXTREMELY seriously.</p>
<p>EDIT: This isn’t necessarily the case at all admitted student weekends though. I visited Chicago last January for a small admitted students weekend and was offered both drugs and alcohol.</p>
<p>Oh God. If someone offers you drugs or alcohol tell someone. CPW is supposed to be dry. We–the students, not just the administration–take that very seriously.</p>
<p>CPW is not representative of normal life at MIT. None of the things that happen during CPW are things that don’t happen during term without prefrosh. Sometimes we do stay up playing board games until 6 am. Sometimes we party. Sometimes we talk about math while drinking juice. Sometimes we dress up and play pretend. Sometimes we cook stuff for the whole dorm. We just usually do <em>a lot</em> of p-sets inbetween, and we don’t all do it all at once everywhere.</p>
<p>I can point to several events on my dorm’s schedule that I have never seen done at my dorm outside of CPW, rush, or i3 filming (the video we send you guys to convince you to live here). I’ll note that I’ve been around this dorm for two years. I’ve observed similar in other dorms.</p>
<p>Many things that happen during CPW do happen at other times of term - some do not. Remember that we (as a dorm, as a school) are trying to show off to you. Remember every other school will be doing the same.</p>
<p>I started talking with other Randomites/friends about this, and I got a nugget for you.</p>
<p>A friend of mine worded this quite well - “this is what we’d be doing all the time if we weren’t hosed and had funding all the time; you should take this as indicative of the kind of people we are”</p>
<p>It’s fantastic fun for us, but truth is, CPW/rush/i3 is good motivation to do things we’d like to do… but sometimes can’t get off our butts to do otherwise :)</p>
<p>They don’t smash the piano during CPW. That’s during drop date in the spring.</p>