<p>Columbia (college) vs MIT?? Got off the waitlist at MIT and need to make a decision by the 28th! Going for business or pre-med; not entirely sure so internships are definitely a plus! Is MIT much more rigorous?</p>
<p>When did you get off the waitlist?</p>
<p>Any other information? What you want to major in, what you prefer in terms of weather/school size/culture? I’m sure there are tons of people here who want to help you make your decision but they’ll need more information to do so.</p>
<p>@ natelotof
I got off the waitlist may 13th; were you waitlisted as well?</p>
<p>@ therazor302
I’m thinking of economics (14) or biology (7) along with management (15). it seems like alot of kids double major, especially with 15. and specifically i’d like to try finance. weather and school size are pretty similar between the two schools so i guess culture and career options will probably be deciding factors. could anyone speak to those? :)</p>
<p>Ya I was waitlisted. Thats why we haven’t heard anything since they gave you until the 28th. I thought maybe you got off the list within a few days.</p>
<p>I got off the waitlist too! I was deciding between Dartmouth and MIT, im interested in economics and molecular biology too!!! haha, I’m 80% sure I’m going to MIT =]. I mean, I completely fell in love with the Darmouth campus (it’s SOO pretty), but I felt like MIT was a better place for me to spend 4 years - i got a sense that people at MIT wanted to make a difference, whether in the U.S. or globally, and I really liked that international connectedness. I also heard that it was relatively “easy” to double major if you do one in humanities and one in science, which is what I’m going to try for. I heard MIT was pretty intense, but there’s no class rank or latin honors or anything like that so it’s a SUPER collaborative community - which I really liked (I heard this from virtually everyone I talked to there).</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/908697-what-can-we-tell-you-will-help-you-make-your-decision.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/908697-what-can-we-tell-you-will-help-you-make-your-decision.html</a></p>
<p>There is a thread of people doing exactly what you’d like, convincing you where to go. It’s died down since May 1st but you can find tons of answers. I’m personally a 2015 hopeful and can’t do much to tell you one way or the other.</p>
<p>Any current students or alum that can help? I liked the science focus at MIT but does engineering overshadow business/pre-med?</p>
<p>Well, there are more students who major in engineering than in management or who consider themselves pre-med, but about 100 students (10% of each class) earn degrees in management every year, and about 150 apply to medical school. If you choose either track (or both), you’ll be in good company. ([stats</a> on degrees awarded](<a href=“Statistics & Reports | MIT Registrar”>Statistics & Reports | MIT Registrar), [preprofessional</a> stats](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html]preprofessional”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html))</p>
<p>Are there any specific questions you have about MIT’s culture or job/internship opportunities? We’re happy to help, but it’s easier to respond when there’s a concrete question to answer.</p>
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<p>Yes, emphasis on ‘relatively.’</p>
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<p>YES!!</p>
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<p>As far as career option goes, I doubt the window of careers open to you if you decide to attend either school will shift dramatically. We have plenty of premeds here, just like any other college. What’s most important is where you see yourself being the most happy at for the next 4 years. “Culture” is extremely difficult to comment on - there are hundreds of pages of CC threads devoted to this topic and on the admission blogs - suffice it to say that we have one of the most vibrant campus cultures anywhere in the US, and we’re pretty dang proud of it. : )</p>
<p>I agree with Mollie, it’ll help if you ask more specific questions about MIT that we can answer.</p>
<p>ps. Completely unrelated and irrelevant, but in my freshman triple all three of us got into Columbia and all three of us decided to come to MIT : )</p>
<p>Does MIT provide opportunities to work on discussion/presentation skills?
@oasis why did all three of you choose MIT? two of my friends at MIT said that I would probably be happier at columbia just because I’d have more time to relax/sleep haha. how many hours of sleep do you/your friends get?</p>
<p>also @ oasis, i read in another pre-med thread that you’re probably not going to apply to the top tier medical schools. are there many MIT students who get into top med schools applying as a senior? what does it take to get into to the top tier (harvard/hopkins/uc’s/columbia/cornell)? i met many senior pre-meds on campus who were going to work/do a master’s in public policy but i’d really like to go directly to med school.</p>
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Absolutely. All MIT students are required to take classes labeled as “communication-intensive”, which must require presentations, in both the humanities and in their majors. And at least in the upper-division science classes, there are ample opportunities to present and to discuss, often in seminar-style scientific literature discussion courses. Almost all of my humanities courses involved significant amounts of in-class discussion and debate.</p>
<p>And I can’t tell you how much sleep oasis gets, but I can tell you precisely how much I got when I was an undergrad: <a href=“http://web.mit.edu/mollieb/Public/Sleep%20Statistics.pdf[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/mollieb/Public/Sleep%20Statistics.pdf</a></p>
<p>Wow, that’s cool that you kept track of your sleep schedule! I noticed that you got the least sleep freshman year; why was that? Also, were you a “nightowl” in high school as well or did the extra workload lead to sleeping at 3 AM?</p>
<p>I was much worse at time management freshman year than I became in my upper years, and I hadn’t figured out yet that I was a better student when I got more sleep. I also had a boyfriend back home, and I was on the phone to him for a couple of hours every night.</p>
<p>I was also a night owl in high school, but not to the extreme that I became early in college – of course, my first class in high school started at 7:30, and my first class at MIT freshman year started at 10:00, so I probably got about as much sleep in high school as I did early in college. MIT was certainly a step up in workload and difficulty from my high school, but I was also a big-time procrastinator as a freshman, and I found it more enjoyable to sit around chatting with friends than to start my psets before midnight.</p>
<p>I always hear about psets-how often are they assigned? I know this may vary depending on course, major, prof but for freshmen they should be about the same?</p>
<p>All three of us chose MIT for different reasons. One really wanted to do Physics, and he really loved the opportunities that he had here. One liked the class style better and the lack of the Ivy League snobbishness, so he came here. I liked Boston, so I came here =p I really grew to like MIT AFTER coming here…I actually did very little research when I was applying and choosing the school.</p>
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<p>One of the premeds that I admire the most here has kept a consistent 10 PM to 7 AM schedule all three years of her undergrad, so sleep deprivation is not a necessity. I usually get to sleep about 7 hours per night sophomore year and first semester this year, but significantly slept less my freshman year because of very poor time management. This semester I averaged 5 per night (very exhausting…) and used the weekends to catch up on sleep, but I also took six full classes so that took a toll on my sleeping time.</p>
<p>Really, you get to choose how much you sleep here. If you’re impeccable at time management, you can sleep 9 or 10 hours every night. I’m pretty bad at procrastinating so often I would want to stay up and chat with my hallmates before going to bed, and sometimes these conversations end up going till 5 AM, which is very bad for the hours of sleep that I got =p</p>
<p>Re: Applying to Med School</p>
<p>I haven’t drawn up my list yet for the schools I’m applying to, but I have a preliminary list. I’m applying to many selective med schools with the exception of Hopkins and Wash U. According to my premed adviser, my numbers are competitive at every med school in the country, and I’m not directly excluded at any based on numbers alone. Just FYI I have a 4.7/5.0 GPA and a MCAT that is higher than the MIT average (35). Honestly, I have no clue how this cycle will turn out for me, so we’ll see and I’m hoping for the best. =)</p>
<p>If you’re curious, here are the class of 2009 med school admission stats to the best med schools (# of acceptances):</p>
<p>Harvard: 16
Wash U: 14
Stanford: 13
UCSF: 11
Yale: 10
NYU: 9
Columbia: 7
Cornell: 7
Duke: 6
JHU: 6</p>
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<p>GIR psets are generally pretty consistent - I think there’s like 7 for the bio GIR and 12 for 18.02, and a similar amount (8 or so) for the physics GIRs. Bio is once every two weeks, and math is once every week. Since there’s inevitably a bunch of your friends taking the same GIRs as you are, you’ll have plenty of people to work with during your “pset parties.”</p>
<p>The number of psets in your upper division classes depends on your major. Physics generally have weekly or biweekly (is this the right word? once every 2 weeks) psets all the way till they graduate. I’m a bio major and I had a grand total of 7 psets for 2 classes this term and something like 6 psets for 2 classes last term. The number of exams generally stay consistent though - 2-4 exams for each class that make up the bulk of your grade. (oh yes - for most classes psets are worth little to nothing in the determination of your grade, unlike high school. most of my pset grades ranged from 5% to 10%, and some classes (like 5.12 in the fall) the psets are “optional” =p)</p>
<p>I had to make this choice too! I chose MIT because I liked the environment better, and in the end it’s the people that shape your college experience.
Also, I’m pre-med and I was attracted by the amount of hands-on research I could participate in as a freshman.</p>