<p>Does anyone here go to grad school at MIT? If so, how is the experience?</p>
<p>I got into grad school at MIT, and I (naturally) know quite a few people in various graduate programs.</p>
<p>The experience in a given graduate program is highly individual; it depends on the specific program and also strongly on the student's advisor. There's no general "MIT grad school" experience. The graduate student community is much less centralized than the undergraduate student community.</p>
<p>I know that it depends on the program and the advisor. I was looking for more general things such as how are stipends, are working quarters generally good, and are there a lot of things for the graduate community to do outside of the lab?</p>
<p>Still depends highly on the program and the advisor. Plenty of programs, especially many master's degree programs, don't provide any stipends at all. Qualify of the working quarters also depends strongly on which program you are in. Some programs have very nice new buildings, notably the CS facilities in the Stata Center. Others are extremely grungy, notably (and surprisingly) some parts of the Sloan School. I think even Sloan students would concede that Sloan is arguably the grungiest of all of the top B-schools. Compare the campus of Sloan to, say, Harvard Business School, and the difference is like night and day. </p>
<p>As far as things to do in the graduate community, again, depends strongly on the program. Some programs, notably the Sloan School, are extraordinarily social. Then again, it is a business school, and business has a lot to do with networking, so you would expect a plethora of things to do within the Sloan community. I swear, if Sloan ever shut down, half of the bars in Cambridge would probably go bankrupt. Other departments such as political science and economics also tend to be quite social. But other departments have a far more introverted culture.</p>