<p>As far as I've heard, the workload at MIT can be a bit staggering, so how difficult is it to maintain a high GPA for the average MIT student? Like 3.5+? Do only geniuses achieve this? </p>
<p>I also plan to major in biology, and I want to do a good chunk of research. How accessible are the professors in MIT's spectacular biology department?</p>
<p>It’s pretty easy to get involved in research in biology – there are a lot of great, well-funded labs looking for undergrads to join the party. I got a research job at the beginning of sophomore year by emailing a few professors in the department, no real effort required.</p>
<p>It’s certainly tough to maintain a 3.5+ GPA, but people do it if they want to go to medical school. The average premed applying from MIT has a 3.6 or a 3.7 – much higher than the average GPA at MIT, but no staggering genius required. I was a biology major (emphatically not premed), and I know a lot of people who are now in medical school. I don’t think there’s a problem with being premed at MIT, except that MIT’s academic culture is pretty opposite from premed culture: everybody works together, people generally pick classes they’re interested in rather than easy classes, and people generally aren’t worried about getting perfect GPAs. To be a premed at MIT, you have to swim against the current on those points (well, not the working together point), and that can be tough.</p>
<p>I’m a freshman, and I just found a great biology UROP for the summer despite the fact that I don’t have a bunch of lab experience (and I’m in the Whitehead Institute, no less, working on planaria!).</p>
<p>@Mollie - what is the average GPA?</p>
<p>Yeah, I had zero experience, e-mailed around, and have been working at McGovern since January. It is super easy to get involved.</p>
<p>Getting a 3.5+ GPA at MIT is achievable with some reasonable planning. There is a strong masochist culture at MIT with students overloading on very heavy classloads. My D is a sophomore premed in the Brain & Cog Science department. Her current GPA is around 3.6 and she is no math/science superstar. She may have had a slightly higher GPA elsewhere but wouldn’t trade for anything. </p>
<p>If you like biology you may also want to check out the BCS department which has the largest neuroscience lab in the world. The faculty is absolutely top-notch. Many students in the department are premed and there are many more UROP positions open than applicants.</p>
<p>Agreed with the previous posts. After this semester I will have completed all my science GIRs, and it’s not at all easy to maintain straight As. As a premed, it’s sometimes demoralizing to need to worry about grades so much when many of your peers can worry more about LEARNING and less about GRADES. But on the plus side, I hear that the popular medical schools are somewhat aware of the fact that classes at MIT tend to be tougher and grades tent to not be inflated, so they take that into account when comparing you to the rest of their applicant pool. </p>
<p>All that being said, however, its by no means impossible to keep up a very high GPA. But no matter what your GPA is, at the end of the day you can rest assured you got a great education and feel proud that you graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At least, that’s how I hope it’ll feel.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. It’s also a bit of a relief that all your posts are being made at reasonable times in the day. =)</p>
<p>I’m glad you see 1AM as a perfectly reasonable time of day :D</p>
<p>
There was a link floating around several months ago, and I don’t have the brainpower at the moment to remember which thread it was in. It showed average GPA by class, and showed that GPA rises in a linear fashion as students progress through MIT, with seniors having the highest average at 4.2.</p>
<p>Some professors are more accessible than others. I happen to see my research advisor almost every day.</p>
<p>I’m a premed in Course 7, lol.</p>
<p>Although I’m a premed, I emphatically state that I’m not one of those “oh-no-I-got-a-B-my-life-is-coming-to-an-end” kind of premeds.</p>
<p>IMO, you’ll get your share of 5.0 premeds here that study all the time and do massive amounts of research in anticipation for medical school. You’ll also get your share of premeds that get Cs in some classes but still have plans to go to med school. However, the moral of the story is, if you’re an undergrad and you utilize the premed adviser service, your chances of getting from here to at least one med school is 90% (see premed data website). Thus, I think we’re all fine at the end.</p>
<p>What I really like about premed here at MIT is that despite the fact that I’m taking a ton of classes with other premeds and we’re all competing for that A (which for many classes only 15-20% of us will receive), there’s really no sense of uber-competition amongst us. When I don’t go to lecture, I can ask for notes from my friends taking the class. We study together to prepare for the exams. This is drastically different from my HS classmate, who’s in JHU premed but she had her bio lab experiment sabotaged on the eve of the assignment deadline while she was out of the lab.</p>
<p>I really have to agree with skysk’s comment above about us worrying about As when other students care more about just doing enough to PASS the classes - but at the same time I felt that having to maintain a 4.6+ GPA (for the moment I’m just trying to stay above the premed average =p) also taught me a lot of self-discipline. For example, I had literally no self-discipline during my first semester here (thank goodness all my grades for that semester showed up as Ps rather than their real letter grades =p) and now that this is my 4th semester here, I’m really starting to find study patterns and schedules that work for me. I think I can get through fine here without much effort or study if I just get Cs in all my classes, but getting As do require effort - and the end result of understanding and sense of accomplishment is truly worth it.</p>