<p>Its awesome how a college can be strong in all aspects... </p>
<p>Stanford and Berkeley are the other two where you can have top notch education regardless of the field you want to major in right?</p>
<p>MIT is top-notch in the sciences and engineering, but its humanities department (except for linguistics) is not top rated. I think maybe poli-sci is 10 or so?</p>
<p>But MIT's economics dept is pretty strong no?</p>
<p>MIT econ is #1 in the nation</p>
<p>yeah. MIT economics is considered the absolute cream of the crop along with U-chicago. I think MIT has the 2nd most number of economics noble prize winners after U-Chicago.</p>
<p>vecter, are you sure? (I can't challenge the words from an actual MIT student :P)</p>
<p>lol sure about what? econ is very good, I forgot to add that :) other humanities are not so amazing, but they're not bad either</p>
<p>nothing is bad of course. But granted, I wouldn't choose MIT if I wanted to be a history major</p>
<p>"But granted, I wouldn't choose MIT if I wanted to be a history major"</p>
<p>Especially since you'd still have to take calculus, physics, chemistry, bio, and all the rest of the general requirements. There are much easier ways to be a history major than by going to MIT.</p>
<p>Yes, MIT's Political Science Dept. is the 10th in the nation. The ranking of each dept. is here:</p>
<p>I notice how they don't tell you what their history ranking is.</p>
<p>noticed* </p>
<p>And sorry about other errors, my brain's not working very well. I think I've got a tumor.</p>
<p>I used to think the same taffy. You don't have one :)</p>
<p>about her, or you?</p>
<p>i'd assume they don't tell you how the history dept is ranked b/c they're pretty sure no one looking at that page actually cares. out of curiosity, what's the most common source(s) for departmental rankings, and what's their general methodology? especially if it emphasizes numbers of students and faculty, and doesn't scale for that properly, i can imagine some unfortunate statistics resulting. like a little blurb i saw, ranking universities by the numbers of patents earned by their researchers. the winner, with about 2-3 times the 2nd place finisher? UC...the entire system together.</p>
<p>I have to back up vector on this one. MIT is obviously powerful in all technical/quant fields. On the other hand, MIT is not so strong when it comes to humanities and in many social sciences, economics being one of the major exceptions. Also, many of the humanities/social sciences are not even taught. For example, it is impossible to get a formal degree in English from MIT, although you can get put something together in Course 21 that resembles a formal English major. You can't get a formal degree in, say, sociology, although you can cobble together a program that resembles one, say through course 17 and through STS. </p>
<p>Then again, if you are really interested in studying the humanities, you probably aren't going to apply to MIT in the first place.</p>