<p>^^^^^^^</p>
<p>I’m sorry to ruin your cycle : ( I just noticed your game. LOL</p>
<p>But we shouldn’t let the carat game detract from oasis’ post. When I visited MIT, I did not sit in on any of the sciences or engineering classes. I presumed that they would be great. Rather, I wanted to sit in on a wide variety of HASS classes, as I wanted to reassure myself that I would not be sacrificing my love of humanities by choosing to go to MIT. I was amazed by the quality of the instructors whose classes I sat in on (including a dramatic writing course by a professor whose work I had seen that term on Broadway).</p>
<p>So I went to MIT, and I never regretted it. But it’s a very personal decision. It’s not like picking a new job, where you go home each night. When you choose a university, you are choosing your home for the next 4 years. You want a place that makes you feel at home. My friends from MIT are still my friends today. I get together with a group of say fifteen or twenty of my friends from MIT at least yearly, and often twice per year, which says something as we are scattered across four continents. Our children play with each other, we are there for major life events. Now, everyone’s mileage will vary. I cannot promise anyone friends for life, but I can promise that MIT is very good at bringing like-minded people together, and then placing them in an environment that encourages them into closer connections with each other. Good luck with the decision.</p>
<p>There are programs so people from LAC’s can do research at universities during the summers. So it is possible to get some of the same research experience. Obviously, you can’t continue that research during the year so that’s a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Mikalye or Chris…out of curiosity, how is the literature stuff at MIT? Sorry if I missed something, but I saw mainly mention of some foreign languages and history.</p>
<p>@mathboy98 - I went on the Discover Literature FPOP (Freshman Pre-Orientation Program) as a frosh, and was a counselor for it the next year, and took a literature class last term. My contact with literature profs from FPOP has convinced me that the lit department here is AWESOME, and the class I took last term was probably the most enjoyable HASS I’ve had at MIT :D</p>
<p>This is good to know! To you personally, what made it so particularly awesome, among all the literature gatherings you may have been a part of?</p>
<p>(1) Professors - They’re interesting, engaging, and often hilarious.
(2) The classes - I took Folk Music of the British Isles and North America. The literature half (it was a music class too) was on balladry! Ballads! I gained an appreciation for this style (originally, I thought it didn’t sound all that good). I like the random classes here. This term, there’s a class on vampires in literature. They even show some Buffy clips O.O</p>
<p>… I didn’t take it because I’d have to reread Twilight. Never again >.></p>
<p>…wait seriously they read Twilight.</p>
<p>That’s it, I’m transferring.</p>
<p>OK, I’m sold enough :D</p>
<p>Although I don’t know anything about ballads…</p>
<p>I would also say actually that having a class full of several scientific/technical folk hopefully actually wanting to foray into such things is a unique and very nice thing, that is as opposed to being full of mainly English majors who did their major to avoid having to take a calculus class…as good folk as they may be…</p>
<p>^ Another awesome thing about 21M.223J was that we had balladry and folk music performers over, including some famous ones in the circles :D</p>
<p>^^ So how is a class half literature and half music – setting some of the studied verse to music?? Does the professor give lots of demonstrations?</p>
<p>Also, just saying, that’s one of the wildest class numbers I have ever seen…</p>
<p>The number is parseable – it’s a humanities class (21), specifically in the music department (M), upper-level (223 vs. 100 or something), and joint with another department (J; in this case, presumably the literature department). </p>
<p>Another nice thing about classes in literature (and many other humanities classes in general) is that they’re small – I took one of the bigger intro courses (21L.004; Major Poets), and I think there were about 12-15 of us in the class. That does tend to mean you have to do your reading, though.</p>
<p>The class is basically studying aspects of folk culture. Balladry and fiddle music both tie in to folk culture quite nicely ^.^</p>
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<p>Maybe not knowing what anything but “18” means helped make it intimidating :D</p>
<p>And ah, that makes sense Piper…</p>
<p>The originator of this thread “mentler” mentioned her son was an accomplished musician and interested in playing in a string quartet. What can anyone say about the the chamber Music Society at MIT? It appears to be pretty amazing from the MIT web site.</p>