<p>Well, people have different perspectives but as a whole do u think MIT is cut-throat? Is the atmosphere, the competition and all depressing if u can't cope up with it? I know MIT can give u all the name and recognition u can ever want, but can it give a sense of well-being? Can it make u complete individual or a robot-like working machine who sells his intellect at astronomical prices? Do many people suffer from inferiority complexes there?</p>
<p>As a whole, I definitely think MIT is NOT cut-throat. MIT students are encouraged to work together and help each other - and there’s no rank or honors to compete for, no reason to cut people down. People tool together, work on projects together, etc. I don’t get the sense of people competing with each other - within themselves, yes (ie Can I take 8.012 and survive? Can I handle 5 classes?), but not each other.</p>
<p>Take a look at the blogs and see if you think MIT students are robot-like working machines - what you’ll see is people who take part in musical theater, the hacks, people who build toys, parties, etc. No, MIT’s not going to lock you up in your room and torture you =D.</p>
<p>And is it true that MIT isn’t a great undergrad experience?? Are there TAs and stuff and do profs have time for us undergrads?? Is it better than undergrad at say Dartmouth or Princeton?? People are advising me to undergrad at other places and do grad at MIT … what do I do??</p>
<p>I’m curious to where you’re getting this negative impression of MIT - I think the undergraduate experience here is wonderful. As for the professors and TAs, they’ve always been available to me when I’ve asked for extra time with them (and on top of that, both professors and TAs have office hours). And have you looked into the UROP program at all? There are great opportunities here for MIT students.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you what you should do, as that’s all very individual - but I can tell you that a lot of the things you’re bringing up are false impressions of MIT.</p>
<p>Like Piper, I don’t see MIT as cutthroat at all. Students work very hard, and everyone is always challenging himself/herself (and the professors are always challenging everyone), but everybody realizes that it’s more productive to work with other students rather than against them.</p>
<p>It can be depressing to be at MIT if you’re not doing well or happy with the environment – a lot of the culture of MIT is about working really hard, and if you’re not doing well you can feel like you’re the only stupid one in a sea of geniuses (which isn’t true, but that doesn’t help). But there are a lot of resources available for struggling students, also.</p>
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I definitely feel like a complete person – or, at least, I have no idea what it feels like to be a robot-like working machine. Most people at MIT participate in a UROP or in extracurriculars, and everybody does stuff with their friends to blow off steam. Like Piper is saying, everybody takes time off to do fun things.</p>
<p>I had a great time during my four years at MIT, and I wouldn’t have traded it for any other undergraduate experience. I got attention from professors, particularly in small graduate-level seminars during my upperclass years, and was close enough to several professors to get a lot of help on my graduate school applications. I think it’s great to be at a school with an outstanding grad program reputation, because that indicates that the quality of research going on is much higher than at a school with a poor graduate program or no graduate program at all. It also opens up a lot of research positions, because undergrads generally work closely with an undergrad or a postdoc in UROP, so having excellent, well-funded labs means there are almost unlimited undergraduate research positions. </p>
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Tell them it’s a lot easier to go to graduate school at MIT if you do undergrad there as well. This is a pet peeve of mine – it’s not as if you can just magically choose to go to MIT for grad school, even if you are a very good high school student. It’s very difficult to remain an outstanding student all through college and be in a position where you can get into top graduate programs in your field. I felt that it was much easier for me to get into graduate school coming from MIT, both because of my recommendation letters from well-known professors in my field and because of the opportunities I had been able to take advantage of as an MIT student. I do not think I’d be in my current PhD program if I hadn’t gone to MIT.</p>
<p>It is my impression that MIT students are a more self selected lot than those who go to the schools with more liberal arts. I think any of the tech schools fall into that category.</p>
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<p>No. This has been asked before, recently even. Based on the answers to these threads (and my impression of people’s views as an undergrad), most MIT students do not think that MIT is at all cutthroat, and don’t understand why so many outsiders assume it is.</p>
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<p>Anything is depressing if you can’t cope with it. But like everyone has told you, it’s not a competitive atmosphere. If anything, it’s warm and collaborative, great sense of camaraderie.</p>
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<p>Of course.</p>
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<p>Er…if you become a robot-like working machine, you did it to yourself. And I would venture to say that you’re already a complete individual. For most people I know, it improved their personalities, expanded their worlds, and strengthened them.</p>
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<p>I’ll give you this one. Yes, you get a lot of people developing inferiority complexes. They have strong support networks to fall back on, and they generally recover pretty quickly after graduating.</p>
<p>Thanks so much everyone! Hoodwink’d with faery fancy I was …</p>
<p>And thanks, adrivit. You’ve ensured that I’ve heard some really pleasing stuff. :D</p>
<p>OK .. Don’t lash out at me! Is research mainly concerned with grads and post-docs? I know all about the UROP. But has any undergrad really stood out in terms of research during undergrad there? Again … don’t lash out at me!</p>
<p>Research (everywhere, not just at MIT) is extremely collaborative, and at MIT, undergrads are considered to be just as smart and capable (or more so) than graduate students, so outstanding research is done by undergrads, graduate students, and postdocs together.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what “really stood out” means – a lot of students get authorship on papers, and sometimes first authorship, but no undergrad is an island, and everybody does the work together. MIT students are certainly well-prepared by UROP to stand out in graduate school admissions, but nobody has ever done Nobel Prize-winning work while an undergrad at MIT, if that’s the kind of thing you mean.</p>
<p>Thanks!!!
Obviously I didn’t mean Nobel level work or anything. Just if grads and post-docs let ugrads publish their work or not … Thanks!</p>
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<p>It does depend on what the undergrad is doing, of course. I believe that ~20% of MIT undergrads publish undergrad work.</p>