<p>thunderbird,</p>
<p>Alternatively, think about how you'll feel on July 2 (R-Day) if you choose MIT. Also, the Army could send you to MIT for graduate school.</p>
<p>With either choice you'll have incredible opportunities open to you and end up in the exact same place after graduation. Best of luck during these next couple weeks while you're deciding. Please let us know what you choose.</p>
<p>thunderbird1990: Looking at your previous posts, you have done all the research you need, and have already accepted you USMA appointment. However, you are still undecided - so my guess is you should choose MIT. I'm not sure if there is any pressure from your father to attend USMA (you said he was a grad and that you had grown up always assuming you would attend too), but that is not a reason to attend. Candidates who accept an appointment because of family influences have the highest drop out rate. You need to really want it for yourself. I know that there are candidates on the waiting list who will not hesitate to say "yes" if you give up your appointment. Be honest with yourself about your goals and follow your heart.
Congratulations on your acceptances - Good luck!</p>
<p>thunderbird1990,
Think about turning in the acceptance card for West Point. Does that make you feel happy? Now think about accepting MIT. Which one FEELS right?<br>
You can also think the opposite way - does turning in the USMA declination card make you feel happy or bad? How does writing that "no" letter to MIT make you feel? You have narrowed your decision to two schools. You are making progress. Good luck and trust yourself. You will know when you are ready to commit!</p>
<p>Coming a bit late to this. Again, I reply not as a WP alum (perish the heretical thought), but as an average SA guy who's been out in the "real" world a bit, too.</p>
<p>I'd do West Point for the following reasons:</p>
<p>1) If you decline MIT in favor of West Point, you can always reapply and get accepted to MIT if you change your mind. Not necessarily true for West Point.</p>
<p>2) You can always go to MIT for graduate school. There is no graduate school that comes even remotely close to a Service Academy on the topic of leadership (and I'll even swallow my pride and say that WP has the edge on that among the SA's, too - but not much of an edge. Just a hair. Infinitely small. Practically none. ;) ) </p>
<p>I'd say a resume with a BS from West Point and an MS from MIT, plus five years of in-the-field leadership experience (at a minimum), would pack a bit of a punch, don't you?</p>
<p>3) West Point is recognized as having one of the finest (if not THE finest) Civil Engineering programs in the world.</p>
<p>4) I've never heard anyone regret that they went to a SA rather than a civilian school (not after graduation, anyway). I can't say the opposite.</p>
<p>5) Upstate NY vs. Boston. GAG!</p>
<p>Good luck! :)</p>
<p>I heard that USMA has the #2 Civil Engineering program in the country and the #5 Mechanical Engineering program (2006(?) US News and World Reports). I've also been told by a USMA parent that the only other school in the nation that teaches the calculus that MIT does is, of all places, USMA! I haven't heard that anywhere else, but at either school the mathematics are top notch.</p>
<p>Uh..... What's different in the Calculus as compared to everywhere else that teaches it? :confused:</p>
<p>I've done my research on placement of either school's engineering/mathematics programs, and they are not directly compared to each other...at least not by reputably accurate sources such as US News+World. Apparently people dont like comparing schools that offer only bachelors to schools that give PhDs.
With that stated, I am under the impression that MIT has the top engineering school in the nation (and perhaps in the world), which entails that many of its specific majors are second to none. West Point, on the other hand, has a pretty top-notch program as well, but you have to realize that academics are not its primary focus...it is, remember, and has always been the foremost producer of Army officers for the U.S., which places its priority on making leaders...not nerds.
Until recently, USMA has been the only possible post-high school location for me. I applied to MIT under the intention that my chances at getting were marginal, and I therefore did not put much of my future planning into it. Obviously after getting in, visiting, talking to current students, etc. I began to think that MIT has everything: top-notch ROTC programs, a super engineering program (which interests me considerably in an academic sense), a decent campus and college life, and, surprisingly enough, Physical Ed. requirements and a student body that consists of 20% varsity athletes. Naturally, MIT being an alternate and actually feasible route after high school, the school became an exciting and almost exotic idea to me.
I have always revered West Point and the atmosphere with which it is associated...and although my dad is a grad, I have always personally been drawn to it, whether it be because of what I've seen my dad go through or because of other reasons such as the appealing nature of military life to me.
So I obviously don't have a clear-cut shot at the "best" decision, but I'm pretty sure that either place is going to get me somewhere where I'll function and enjoy what I'm doing.
The problem is deciding...
And also, momoftwins brings up a good point: if I end up choosing MIT, I may become so immersed in the stressful life of strictly academic endeavors that I regret not being able to suck it up with my classmates during, say, PT or dreaded mealtime. That said, I have to say that I probably possess a personality more similar to those typical at the academy...though I'm not sure. Just a few thoughts...
Should this be a factor--that is, considering primarily life during my first four years of college (at USMA and MIT)? I mean, I would think that looking ten to fifteen to maybe twenty or so years ahead would better guide my in choosing. Any other thoughts? appreciate it...</p>
<p>Just my mid-west opinion on the whole WP v. MIT debate. Straw poll of my friends would reveal that if you told us that you were going to MIT we would think that you have no life. If you told us that you were going to USMA we would buy you lunch and come and visit you some time at the Point. Sorry if this doesn't help, but it's just the connotations that MIT and USMA have to people around here.</p>
<p>"Uh..... What's different in the Calculus as compared to everywhere else that teaches it?"</p>
<p>I don't know, it's just something I heard a parent say but I have yet to have that verified anywhere else.</p>
<p>Some of these service academy parents say pretty silly things once in a while. :D I just don't know where they get some of their ideas.</p>
<p>I too would love to go to the USMA but unfortunatly have ADHD and in order to go would have to stop taking my medication which would hinder my performance to greatly. I also would love to go to MIT as it is arguably the best engineering and computer science school in the world. I would recomend going to WP for undergraduate then go into the US Army and when you are finished there go to grad school at MIT.</p>
<p>That's why one school is "argueably" the "better" than the other. Leaves both sides an honorable "out" :)</p>
<p>What the parent who spoke to Future Warrior may have said badly (or he misunderstood) is the the math class plebes take is only offered at MIT and USMA. I believe it was/is called Discrete Dynamical Systems (any of the plebe's want to chime in?). That was the information put out by the math instructor at the open house on Plebe Parent week 2004.</p>
<p>I took DDS last year and I still don't know what it is. But I got an A.</p>
<p>LOL!</p>
<p>USMA08Mom,</p>
<p>The parent said something along the lines of "The only other school that teaches the core calculus that USMA does is MIT." So, if DDS is the course and that really is the case, thanks for clearing that up for me.</p>
<p>Do what K says and go army! (Unless you really want to go to MIT)</p>
<p>I graduated from Annapolis</p>
<p>Follow your heart - go with USMA
Follow your brain - go to MIT</p>
<p>You will need to decide which is best. Being much older than you I can say that the older you get the more important following your heart becomes</p>
<p>I'd go to USMA because you can always seek a MS at MIT while enlisted. Besides from what I have heard and read and service academy offers a unique once in a lifetime experience. MIT will be there after USMA too.</p>