[quote]
The title says it all. This was a question I was asked frequently in graduate school interviews, and I really like it -- cuts all the crap and gets right to the heart of the matter.</p>
<p>What do you really care about in a school, and what don't you know about MIT that prevents you from knowing whether or not you want to spend four years here?</p>
<p>All questions welcome. Sensitive questions are also welcome, but if you'd like to use PM or email to ask them, that's fine with me too.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So let's do it again. All questions, no matter how big or how small, are welcomed. Just be aware that if you make them too big, they're hard to answer succinctly. :)</p>
<p>I see that you're a double major (from the older thread). How much extra work does it take, and did majoring in two subjects prevent you from going as in depth as you would have liked into one area?</p>
<p>Also, dorm identity/pride seems to be a large part of social life (which I like), but if you really think that you would be fit in better at one of the other dorms, does the administration allow you to switch dorms?</p>
<p>I dont know what mollie would say but I will recommend against double majoring unless you absolutely are undecided or interdisciplinary. I know from personal experience that I'm engineering/physics. There's just no way around it. I tried to do engineering and I missed physics (badly). I'm doing physics now and I know I want to eventually go into engineering of some sort so I really want to take classes there too. It puts me in a terrible position, really. What it boils down to is that if you're a double major and a normal human being (<6 classes per semester), you will miss some depth in both your majors. If the majors are hard, you will miss a lot of depth. To me, it's not worth it if all you want is a degree. Honestly, your coursework matters a lot more than the degree you receive, and if sacrificing a few grunt courses of no interest to you (and in turn sacrificing one degree) will allow you to go into greater depth in an area of greater interest, you should do it. By all means do it.</p>
<p>P.S. You can always switch dorms. I think people can make switches in the beginning of every semester and sometimes middle of semester if it is dire. You get to pick the dorm you want to switch into.</p>
<p>For me, the double was not a huge deal. I ended up taking a few very heavy semesters, which was the toughest part, but mostly I took classes that I wanted to take anyway. This is because I really had firm interests in both departments, so it was easy for me to find classes I really wanted to take.</p>
<p>When you double, you have to fulfill 270 units outside the GIRs (you have to fulfill 180 units to single-major). After you finish the requirements for your major, you can get those extra units with any classes you like. I think I had four or five classes to take above what was required for either of my majors; I took all of those classes in the biology department, but they could just as easily have been taken in any other department at MIT.</p>
<p>I do agree with pebbles that a double major has limited utility -- I don't feel like it helped me get into grad school, for example. I do feel that it's helped me in grad school (because I'm in an interdisciplinary program). But you definitely don't have to double to take classes in different departments -- there are vanishingly few courses which are restricted to majors only.</p>
<p>Basically, the major is set up so that students take some common introductory courses in psychology and neuroscience, then are free to take elective subjects of their choice. Some students choose to concentrate in one area of the department (I took almost all of my electives in cellular and molecular neuroscience), and others take classes from many different subdisciplines. Since the major is so flexible, there's not really a typical set of classes that students tend to take, and most classes are a mix of sophomores, juniors, and seniors.</p>
<p>The major is pretty small, and upper-division classes are often based on reading the scientific literature. Grades tend to be based on test performance and sometimes on written work or problem sets. Every undergrad in the department does undergraduate research. Professors are friendly and accessible; I liked almost all of my classes.</p>
<p>Is there anything more specific I could answer? I feel like I must be being vague, but it's hard to say anything more specific without knowing what you want to hear.</p>
<p>I am interested in product development, so I was thinking about 2A. Do know anything about the flexibility of it? Also, how hard is it to maintain a 3.0 (out of 4.0), people have told me that in order to get good internships your GPA should not fall below 3.0</p>
<p>So far as I know (and from what I can see on the degree</a> chart), 2A is pretty flexible -- I know several people who have used it either to double-major or to graduate early. The blogger Melis is 2A, and I'm sure she would be happy to talk with you about it.</p>
<p>I don't know how to quantify the difficulty of keeping a B average. :) For sure, most people at MIT do it -- the median GPA is a 4.2/5.0. In my experience, people usually figure out by sophomore year how much work they need to do to maintain the grades they want. Some people will work really hard to get a certain GPA, some will be happy with the GPA they can get while working at a moderate level. You'll figure out how important grades are to you -- and many people realize they don't care about grades nearly as much as they did in high school.</p>
<p>I don't know that grades are necessarily a factor in getting internships, although they may be in some areas. My fiance has several Cs (and a D!) on his transcript, but he has a resume full of accomplishments from his UROPs which helped him get great internships. His feeling is that GPA only matters if you don't have any other assets.</p>
<p>i need someone who has an honest and experienced opinion about going pre-med at MIT and how hard it is to get into med school b/c of grade deflation. how hard is it to get.... perhaps a 4.5/5.0 if you're taking mostly science courses which are claimed to be easier than engineering? i'm torn between MIT, penn, and brown....and MIT > academically than all of them but i may be killing myself for four years. any advice?</p>
<p>I got a 4.4 in biology and BCS and never felt like I was killing myself to do it. My premed friends at MIT were also not the "hole in the library and study" types -- one of my friends was heavily involved in choral music and her UROP, while the other did cheerleading, volleyball, a UROP, and had a leadership position in her sorority. I would estimate (because MIT students don't tend to talk about these things) that both of them had GPAs similar to mine. (And, just to end the story, they are both first-year medical students and doing fine. :))</p>
<p>As a premed, there are a few tough classes that you have to push through -- the two I've heard of as the worst are 5.13 (the second semester of organic chem) and 5.310 (chem lab). 5.13 is actually hard, I think, while 5.310 is more work-intensive. But nobody's looking to weed out premeds -- MIT isn't a school where you start off with eighty billion premeds and need to narrow it down to the few who can fit in upper-division labs. There's enough room for everybody.</p>
<p>So it's not easy to maintain a high GPA in premed classes, but it's also not live-in-the-library hard. You definitely won't be the hardest-working person at MIT as a premed, that's for sure.</p>
<p>Um, I'm not good at experimental chemistry and I had never written a lab report before I got into 5.310 so I had a pretty bad experience with it. The fact of the matter is I got low 80s high 70s on my first few lab reports which, when each was worth nearly 20% of my grade I dipped below the 90 barrier pretty damn early. It's straight graded so I knew within a few weeks I was getting a B (which I was fine with). The material itself was not hard, but getting a good grade is very hard because it requires your experiements to run very well (which I found to be a rare experience), you have to know everything about an experiment so you'll ace the lab quiz, and you need to have a well written report which I found required you to start the report extremely early, I only worked on mine the night before, which kind of screwed me.</p>
<p>But the material and everything is not hard. If you want an A it is just a lot more work intensive than if you're cool with a B.</p>
<p>But this is just what it seemed to me. If you pull nice TAs that grade easier than mine did then the class will be a lot more enjoyable, or if you know how to make good lab reports already and to keep a lab notebook (oh God, mine was awful, even in my UROP they yell at me because I don't write down anything) you'll be fine.</p>
<p>I'll pre-empt one question -- everybody always asks if MIT is always like it is at CPW. I think I'm pretty safe in saying that the average weekend at MIT is not like CPW, but more in quantity than in quality -- it's not that parties and fun activities don't happen every weekend, it's just that usually there aren't a billion. :) CPW is a concentrated version of an MIT weekend.</p>
<p>Anybody have any more questions? If you've decided on MIT, do you have questions about housing, dining, typical class schedules, or anything else? If you're undecided, what information do you need to decide?</p>
<p>Really, how bad is the workload at MIT? I recognize that this is a very subjective question, but it seems that all I've been hearing from MIT students is either 1) they're dying from the workload and they're barely maintaining a (insert GPA) or 2) they have time to pursue other interests and if they work hard enough, they get their things done.</p>
<p>I would imagine 2 to be the more accurate version, but are there seriously a lot of students that have no time to do anything because of their workload?</p>
<p>depends on what you want to do. if you're triple majoring in math, physics, and engineering, yeah, you'll probably be busy. But if you're just doing the usual 4 classes and have a decent work ability, you should have plenty of time left (not eons but enough). There are some 300 student groups here. How do you think they get run if no one has time?</p>
<p>Here's two other ways to answer that question. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>When I wanted to master completely everything in all my classes, I worked intensely and all the time. When I decided to pick and choose what I wanted to learn ( all of what is taught in chemistry only 3/4 of the details in anthropology) I worked in a much more relaxed way and got A's in the classes I really cared about and B's in the classes I cared about somewhat less. </p></li>
<li><p>One constant frustration at MIT is the plethora of extra-curricular activities. Even if I didn't have classes, there is no way I could do all the activities Iwould like to. This frustration makes it seem as though the workload is more time intensive than it really is.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Of the people I know/knew who didn't do any extracurricular activities, it was always out of not wanting to do them rather than actually being too hosed to do them.</p>
<p>From personal experience, one semester I took 75 units. (One unit is ~one hour of work per week; normal courseload is 48 units.) I know, because I keep track of these sorts of things, that I was in class, doing homework, and in my UROP about 80 hours a week that semester. I still participated in cheerleading -- and it was competition season, so there were extra practices and competitions to attend. It was hard, but kind of enjoyable when everything got done and I finished the semester with a high GPA.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that it's fashionable at MIT to discuss your workload and lack of sleep in exclamatory tones. There is often some exaggeration for effect.</p>