<p>Hey, there. I'm an EA applicant to MIT. I visited the school last November, and, to be honest, I wasn't thrilled. Maybe it was because it was really cold that day, or I was tired from having woken up at 4AM so I could get to Boston in time to make the Harvard tour at 10, and then the MIT tour whenever that was in the afternoon. Whatever it was, I just wasn't feelin' it. The students looked kind of depressed, everyone was hurrying, and everybody just had this unhappy look about them. However, lately I've been reading the MIT blogs almost obsessively, and they make me want to go to MIT SO BADLY. Like A LOT. I was wondering if anybody had any input as to which side of MIT is more real. Please, tell me everything. :)</p>
<p>(I'm trying to get an overnight set up in late November so I can see for myself, but I'm not known for my patience.)</p>
<p>you should sit in a class or do an overnight thing or actually get some experience in some kind of activity. the magic at MIT doesn't happen in lobby 7 at 2 in the afternoon. i'm loving it here more than you can imagine, but i don't look like sunshine and happiness in the middle of the day while i'm running to a class.</p>
<p>I don't think the blogs are necessarily realistically portraying the entire experience. They tend to try to show MIT in a positive light (afterall, they are for admissions purposes). I think many of the bloggers are also relatively balanced. Definetely don't imagine that life here at MIT is JUST LIKE how it seems from the blogs. I would really like to see one of the bloggers be an extremely narrow minded singly driven individual with near zero social life (plenty of people around here like that). Of course, those types of people tend not to blog.</p>
<p>You should ask yourself what you were expecting/hoping to see. Unless you came during CPW or Rush, in general the campus is just normal... everyone is just doing their own thing / whatever they want to.</p>
<p>Are you saying there is a substantial number of loner students? Perhaps you mean students protect individualism? </p>
<p>I might also ask this: do student engage in much debate? I mean, have you noticed many passionate discussions of the future of fields? Of course I am biased in this question as that I am seeking a future in the Bio-Eng field...I would hate to get to a university that was all about the academics and no fun...</p>
<p>The general rule at MIT is that you can find any type of people, as long as you're willing to do enough digging through living groups. My group of friends liked to debate a lot, although not generally on anything terribly intellectual. You probably would have been more likely to find us having a heated debate at 3 AM about something completely frivolous, or else having a chicken fight in the hallway. But there's a tremendous variety of people at MIT, so if chicken fighting in the hallway isn't your speed, you can find something else that is.</p>
<p>And on the issue of looking happy in the hallway, I'm with iostream. If you had seen me in a hallway when I was an undergrad, I probably would have been hurrying too, and probably wouldn't have looked all sunshine and rainbows. That wouldn't have meant I wasn't happy, just that I had stuff to do and experiments to run and dinner to cook. Especially if it was November -- cold weather means you hurry more so you can stay warm. :)</p>
<p>And for the record, I don't think the current bloggers are any more biased about life at MIT than the current students who post on CC. I mean, the average student at MIT does live a fairly balanced life, if you look at extracurricular participation statistics.</p>
<p>lol... yeah I guess mollie's right about that. I still think it would be very interesting entries to read if we did have a super uber loner blogger: </p>
<p>Day 1289: another day in hell... went to class... learn something, came back. Didn't communicate with a human being today. I also got frostbite. Over and out.</p>
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They tend to try to show MIT in a positive light (afterall, they are for admissions purposes).
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<p>Not like we were ever censored. And hell, I certainly had some entries that couldn't exactly be considered "positive". To be fair, I usually wasn't posting when I was at the end of my rope (I generally had other stuff to do at that point).</p>
<p>To the OP: A tour is not going to give you an accurate impression of student life? How could it? It involves walking through hallways having a perky guide talk at you.</p>
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Are you saying there is a substantial number of loner students? Perhaps you mean students protect individualism?
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<p>There are a substantial number of true loners EVERYWHERE. There are also many students who protect individualism. Both groups exist and they are not equivalent.</p>
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The general rule at MIT is that you can find any type of people, as long as you're willing to do enough digging through living groups.
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<p>Mollie's got it right, though add "student clubs" to living groups. If you want to talk about bioeng and there's nobody with that interest in your living group, there's a bioeng student group.</p>
<p>Also, I think this was the most balanced (of positive and negative) entry that I wrote as a blogger, and I think, if I do say so myself ;), that it captures a lot of MIT essence.</p>
<p>I know what you mean about tours not showing you much of how the college actually is, but I was coming from Harvard at the time, where the students seemed almost eerily happy and relaxed. Like they had nothing to do. Not to say that one is better than the other--it was just that the contrast was striking. I, personally, enjoy being busy. :)</p>
[quote]
The general rule at MIT is that you can find any type of people, as long as you're willing to do enough digging through living groups.
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Mollie's got it right, though add "student clubs" to living groups. If you want to talk about bioeng and there's nobody with that interest in your living group, there's a bioeng student group.
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Haha, yes. I guess I have my living group blinders on today. :) (You can probably tell that my closest friends were from my living group, although of course I also had friends from other parts of my dorm, friends from my sports team, friends from my UROP lab, and friends I can't categorize.)</p>
<p>Oooo, Ahh...OH? Why can't you guys say something negative about MIT?! Food fights? That implies persons getting along despite nerd-like tendancies...</p>
<p>That implies... Empathy and Intellect!? and, Laughing.</p>
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Why can't you guys say something negative about MIT?! Food fights? That implies persons getting along despite nerd-like tendancies...
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Haha, not that this is the point, but when I said chicken fights, I didn't mean fights using chicken. I meant the kind of fighting where you're up on someone's shoulders trying to smack someone else, in our case with pillows. :)</p>