<p>Ok, yes, MIT one awesome school. But for those of you who are still deciding consider this (and yes it's only one person's writings, and quite a few ppl's opinion):
"You're entering a world of pain. A world of pain.
The administration will screw you. Your profs will screw you. I promise you, you will regret coming here. Maybe it will happen your frosh year, when housing screws you and you slowly starve to death in a trailer. Maybe it will happen s'more year, as you struggle through the last of your core classes, taught incompetently and incoherently by profs who don't want to be teaching them. Most likely it will happen junior year, late at night, when everyone else has gone to sleep, as you stare aimlessly at the set due in 5 hours, wondering why you can't understand any of this <strong><em>, why all the characters on the page are blurring together, wondering when this school got so *</em></strong>ing hard, wondering how much easier it would have been if you'd just gone to Stanford. Maybe it will happen again senior year, when you realize it was all for nothing because you can't get into a good grad school because this ***ing school ate your gpa and your soul. Trust me, it will happen. You will regret coming here.
That said, are happy times as well, because anybody stupid enough to come here is probably interesting in some way. And the deep sorrow and regret you had at coming here? I guess you'll forget that eventually.
But be forewarned that going here as an undergrad will give you an inferiority complex which will impair your problem-solving ability."</p>
<p>Except for the fact that this was written about Caltech...
<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/community/caltech/10839.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.livejournal.com/community/caltech/10839.html</a></p>
<p>haha nice ^^^</p>
<p>Pwned. (extra char)</p>
<p>That did seem oddly familiar.</p>
<p>I just found it on an MIT student's site and I have frosh MIT friends who echo the same thing.</p>
<p>an MIT surveyor went to the gates of Hell,
he looked the devil in the eye and said "you're looking well",
the devil looked right back at him and asked "why come visit me?,
"you've been through Hell already as you went to MIT"</p>
<p>I can't help but admit I'm almost looking forward to it.</p>
<p>See ya'll next year.</p>
<p>But don't all those psets train you to think sincethey're hard? Doesn't that make MIT engineers/scientists more employable upon graduation because they're trained to think and learn better?</p>
<p>Am I right to say that MIT students don't mind working hard and enjoy solving problems in general? I must admit that I myself get worried looking at psets online, but then what is college life without challenges?=)</p>
<p>Challenging problems are one thing, and spartan methodology of teaching is another.</p>
<p>Take a look at the following two articles, where an IIT grad talks about how demoralizing it can be when after having secured a spot at IIT (which is 10x more difficult to get into than MIT), the students find themselves still struggling to keep up with the courseload.</p>
<p>Article</a> 1
Article</a> 2</p>
<p>Artificially elevating the difficulty is not good at all. (That is a general statement, not for MIT or Caltech or any particular school).
[quote=Kamal Sinha, Article 1]
After I came to the USA to go my graduate studies, thanks to more supportive academic atmosphere and lack of stress from rigorous grading, I was able to concentrate on my studies and learn much more than what I learnt in a supposedly top-notch institution like IIT.
[/quote]
[quote=Kamal Sinha, Article 2]
All this rigor was for what purpose is still unclear to me. With so many courses and homeworks it was almost impossible to try to really understand the subject matter. Instead some of us learnt how to solve some problems to survive. More serious problems, almost never mentioned, remained though.
[/quote]
That's why overwhelmingly rigorous curriculums are not always the best choice IMO.</p>
<p>Haha, well if youre going to slam the Institute, then at least come up with something original.</p>
<p>Oh, and I think the skill of problem solving is understated. One person I talked with said the goal of this education is to give you the skills to pick up a book on a topic youve never seen before, read it, and be able to do it.</p>
<p>You got it wrong, mit2007mit :p</p>
<p>As I said, I'm not implying that MIT's courses are rigorous. I was saying that overwhelming rigour is not always useful (in response to mit_hopefulgirl).</p>
<p>Everyone here knows what kind of MIT maniac I am ;)... can't think of "slamming the Institvte".</p>
<p>hahah kinglz</p>
<p>lol, you got it wrong too. I was referring to the author of this topic. Not you. I wasn't too clear ;)</p>