What can I tell you that will help you make your decision?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>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.</p>

2

<p>How's the social life?
How is the interaction between students and boston?
Is it fun?
Is it all work and no play?
Is the campus enjoyable?
Are professors available to advise often?
Is there a problem is students being stuck-up?
What is bad about MIT?<br>
How long do I have to change a major? (I'm stuck between mathematics, physics, astrophysics, engineering, etc)</p>

<p>I can't seem to get anything bad from my friend other than it is difficult, which isn't bad =).</p>

3

<p>I know of someone who knows of someone (which is why I'm kinda doubtful of this info) who goes to MIT but lives near Boston University, which is kinda out of walking distance from dorms to class. Can that be true? If it's true, how do they deal with the distance--shuttle (how often?) or subways or the T or car, how? and do they feel isolated from campus? What's the farthest dorm you could possibly land into? Yeah, as you can tell, I'm not sure about walking long ways in the cold =P</p>

<p>Do you get lots of free food? In a half hour chat with my friend who goes to MIT, she found free pizza upstairs and then later free krispy kreme donuts downstairs, finally she ditched me for a free screening of the fourth Harry Potter movie the night before the movie even showed in cinemas -___-. So... how often does that kind of deal happen?</p>

<p>wow i'm making college decisions on free food and comfy-ness... eep. XD</p>

4

<p>How did you decide that MIT was right for you? My son was accepted early decision to both MIT and Caltech. I know it needs to be his decision and I'm doing my best to stay out of it..but I want him to think about his decision some and not just go where his heart first lead him. He wasn't even going to go to CPW he was so sure of what his decision would be..but now he's changed his mind and we're coming to CPW. I feel like I'm struggling to help him ask the right questions. He's interested in mathematics. Can he get an idea at CPW what transfer credit he'll get for math courses taken at UCB? At CPW will he have an opportunity to sit in on small math classes and talk with people in the math department about his passion? How many students are in the math classes at MIT? Are math classes more about writing proofs or simply solving equations? Do you have any feel for what his experience will be like if he decides to go to MIT coming from a high school with a total enrollment of less than 100? (thats right 20 kids in the senior class this year and its right across the street from Cal!) thanks so much for all your help!</p>

5

<p>How difficult are the upper math classes for undergraduate students?
Is it hard to get good grades?
What kind of fun activities does MIT offer?
Do you feel that there is a strong bond between students, or is it more of a cut-throat atmosphere?
How hard is it to obtain research positions with professors?
Anything you regret that you missed out on during your undergraduate experience?</p>

<p>I think I want more of a liberal arts experience, not just math and science...so I'm unfortunately leaning towards other colleges.</p>

6

<p>What is, in your opinion, the worst thing about MIT?</p>

7

<p>Oh. Are people close enough to each that they play pranks and stuff? (very important for me)</p>

8

<p>is your UROP the same as the self-help work-study offered as part of the financial aid package? Both pays... if they're different, then what's the difference?</p>

9

<p>Hmm, possibly I'm in over my head here. :) I'll try to answer a few now, and maybe others will pitch in to help.</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>Social life varies depending on who you are and what you're interested in. As you probably know, there are twelve very different dorms you can live in during freshman year -- social life varies from boffing (sp?) at Random Hall to drinking out of red Solo cups at Baker and pretty much everything in between.</p>

<p>Students and Boston. I go into Boston probably once every other week, if not more frequently -- it's great to go off-campus and go shopping or out to eat. Upperclassmen do quite a bit of pub-hopping in Boston as well. :) Many people join fraternities/sororities/independent living groups, which are generally in Boston, so lots of people are in Boston daily. People in fraternities and sororities probably interact with other Boston college students more than other students.</p>

<p>It's definitely not all work and no play, at least not all the time. Sometimes it gets really bad -- this week is the week before spring break, for example, and most people have midterms and projects and all sort of forms of hell. Sometimes it's not so bad. Most weeks, most people can easily and happily take Friday and Saturday nights off and go out and do whatever gets them psyched.</p>

<p>I like MIT's campus. I wrote a blog entry recently on how</a> MIT's campus makes me happy to be alive.</p>

<p>Professors are as available as you're willing to make them. Most of them have weekly office hours, and if you wanted to go chat with them about class or life, they'd be happy to do it. They're busy people, so you have to schedule things with them, but they enjoy talking to undergraduates. If you do a UROP, you usually get pretty close to your faculty advisor -- I can drop in on mine at a moment's notice. Most people don't make the effort to get as close to their profs as they could.</p>

<p>I don't think there are problems with MIT students being stuck up. I mean, there are some, but mostly people get here thinking they're the #1 most l33t haxx0r in the world and then get smote by the first 8.01 test and realize that everybody here is smart and maybe they're just average. The coursework does a lot toward keeping us humble. :)</p>

<p>Stuff that's bad about MIT. People auto-stereotype you when they meet you, which I personally find obnoxious. I think it can be a frustrating place to be if you're unhappy -- when you're not happy and everybody around you is work work working productively, I think it can be pretty demoralizing. Campus tends to be slightly insular -- you become very close with the people in your living group or student groups, but probably not so much with just random people on campus, unless you go out of your way to make that happen.</p>

<p>You declare a major at the end of freshman year (April) -- as of right now, you're considered "year 1" and you don't have a major. If you're still undecided at that point, you can put off the decision until the end of first semester sophomore year. I know people who have switched as late as first semester senior year (of course, they have to stay an extra term or two to get all the requirements done).</p>

10

<p>

Some people (not freshmen) do live off-campus -- most of the fraternities and sororities are in Boston. (Almost everybody who's not in a frat/sorority/independent living group lives on campus all four years.) People who live in Boston deal either by getting a bus pass (the #1 bus goes across the river and stops at 77 Mass Ave; MIT subsidizes MBTA passes for us) or by using the</a> daytime Boston shuttle. There are also shuttles that go around campus, so even if you stay on campus, you can avoid walking! :) People who live off-campus usually appreciate their distance from school, and most of them are okay with the bus/shuttle/walking thing.</p>

<p>The farthest dorm from the academic buildings is Next</a> House, which is probably a 12-15 minute walk to 77 Mass Ave. The closest dorms to the academic buildings are Bexley and EC, both of which are less than a 1 minute walk to academic buildings. :)</p>

<p>There is quite a bit of free food. I suppose if you were savvy and planned things, you could get free food two or three times a week (or more?) for dinner. I know I could get free lunch at least three times a week for lunches sponsored by my department.</p>

<p>Work-study just means a job. The Student</a> Employment Office will find you a job, if you want them to; you can also look around and find a job at one of the campus libraries or at your dormitory front desk. You can, of course, also make money at a UROP. A UROP is obviously better for your career, generally. :) Campus minimum wage is currently $9/hr -- library/front desk jobs usually pay this much, and sometimes UROPs pay more.</p>

11

<p>First off, is there anything I should know about Boston as a city? Any cool places, etc? I hear that everything in Boston is pretty expensive... Does owning bikes help at all transportation-wise?</p>

<p>As for MIT itself, I hear that it's a hard place to get into, but they accomodate you pretty well, and keep you in. As I understand it, the freshman class don't get grades or something similar.</p>

<p>Any experiences with the UROP program? Do many freshman participate?</p>

<p>What's the "big thing" in terms of extracurricular on MIT? For example, my HS is known for our tennis team and many people are interested in how our team does, etc. Anything that's outstanding @ MIT?</p>

<p>A random question: I thought that a school like MIT would be very interested in the recent DARPA challenge kind of stuff, yet their team wasn't even known at well at all. Any particular reason?</p>

<p>How poluted are the rivers / shores near MIT?</p>

<p>I'm sure I'll have more questions soon enough.
Thanks in advance.</p>

<p>(btw, this was the same set of questions i asked in another forum: <a href="http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1829170%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1829170&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

12

<p>Do you have time for anything besides schoolwork and a social life? For example, I'm really into sewing, and I will be sad if I don't have time for it next year :) . And I know the athletic complex is nice, but do you find the time to go work out?</p>

13

<p>

I figured out that MIT was right for me when I visited after being accepted senior year and talked to MIT students -- I met all these really great, genuine, intelligent, helpful people. So hopefully that will help your son too!</p>

<p>He will probably get a good idea of what will transfer if he emails (or meets with at CPW) the math transfer credit examiner. I would advise email, since the transfer credit examiners usually need a syllabus to decide whether they will award credit. The transfer credit examiners' emails can be found [here[/url</a>].</p>

<p>He can definitely sit in on math classes during CPW! Check out the [url=<a href="http://student.mit.edu/catalog/index.cgi%5Dcourse"&gt;http://student.mit.edu/catalog/index.cgi]course&lt;/a> schedule](<a href="http://math.mit.edu/undergraduate/transfer-credit.html%5Dhere%5B/url"&gt;http://math.mit.edu/undergraduate/transfer-credit.html) for the full list of courses offered this semester. You can sit in on anything you want -- grad, undergrad, lab, lecture, recitation -- and I'm sure mootmom and texas137 will offer up their math sons to talk about math options at MIT!</p>

<p>MIT is certainly bigger than a high school with a total enrollment of 100, but once you get into upper-division classes, you're mostly taking classes with the same small group of people. The math dept graduates about 100 people per year, so I should imagine upper-division classes are pretty small (since some people are applied math and some are pure math, etc).</p>

<p>Not sure about the structure of upper-division math classes, but I'm sure someone knows.</p>

14

<p>

How hard it is to get good grades depends on your department and how much you care about getting good grades. I guess the best answer is that it's difficult, but how difficult depends on you.</p>

<p>There are lots of categories of fun activities, but since I'm not entirely sure what kind you want to hear about and since it's 1 AM, I'll just highlight two things. First, there's a student</a> group for pretty much anything you can get excited about, so whatever you think is fun -- somebody else probably thinks is fun too! In the more "campus-wide fun" category, Bryan just wrote an entry about concerts</a> at MIT -- there are also other kinds of concerts and performances, like comedy by Margaret Cho or <guy from="" snl...="" totally="" blanking="">. In the less-professional, more-sophomoric category -- campus a capella group the Chorallaries puts on a "concert</a> in bad taste" every year with the express intent of singing raunchy songs and doing offensive skits. Students gather in one of the lecture halls and shower them with TP while they perform.</guy></p>

<p>MIT is definitely not cutthroat. I think this is due to everybody taking the same classes freshman year -- you learn to do problem sets with other people, because often one person will be good at doing problems of type A, another will be good at problems of type B, etc. There's just not any destructive competition here. We're not that kind of school.</p>

<p>It's pretty easy to get research positions -- there are, after all, a lot of professors here and not a huge number of undergrads! I got my job sophomore year by emailing a handful of professors with my resume and a short cover letter. About 80% of students do undergraduate research.</p>

<p>I don't think I've missed out on anything in my undergraduate years. I've had all the experiences that my friends at state schools have (the typical frat partying, breaking up with the high school sweetheart, dorm drama, learning how to live on my own), but I've also done so many things beyond what they've had the opportunity to do.</p>

<p>Final note: Sure, we're a "tech" school, but 1/4 of our classes have to be humanities, arts, or social sciences classes. If you want to get a broad education, it's perfectly possible for you to do that.</p>

<p>OK, I'm done for the night! :)</p>

15

<p>wow, Mollie... a lot of answers. Thank you so much!</p>

16

<p>What is a good grade in MIT? What is considered a decent GPA in Engineering?</p>

17

<p>B's</p>

<p>Straight B's is pretty acceptable in Engineering... an occasional C. 18.701 personally made sure my entire hall had at least one C on their transcripts.</p>

18

<p>Okey doke, new day, picking back up where I left off.</p>

<p>

For general Boston info, you could check out boston.com (home of the Boston Globe). MIT kids enjoy everything the city has to offer -- Red Sox games (both attending them and listening to the roar across the river; during the World Series my junior year, I could tell when the Sox scored because I could hear the change in the crowd noise!), performances (we can get free or discounted tickets to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Blue Man Group, and the ballet), concerts and shows at the former</a> Fleet Center, museums (we can get in free to the Museum of Science and the Museum of Fine Arts), dining (oh God, the North</a> End!), and shopping (Newbury Street is my favorite, but there are several actual malls too). Pretty much anything you'd want to do is accessible by the [T[/url</a>].</p>

<p>It will definitely seem expensive at first if you're not from the east coast or California. I remember getting here and being like "What the HELL do you mean, five dollars for a sandwich?" but you get used to it after a while. There's a lot of too-expensive-for-your-budget stuff to do, but there are enough college students in Boston that there's always a cheap way to go about things.</p>

<p>Owning a bike will really help if you end up on one of the far-west-campus dorms (Macgregor, Burton Conner, New House, Next House). If you don't live in one of those dorms, it's still nice to have a bike because you can ride into the city.</p>

<p>You're right that first term freshman year is pass-no record. You get either a Pass or a Fail grade for each class, and if you fail, the class doesn't go on your transcript -- it's as if you never took it. Second semester freshman year is A/B/C/No Record, so you'll get grades in classes you pass and no record of classes you fail. (Failing does happen, but it's not terribly common and usually avoidable.) One reason failing is avoidable is that Drop Date (the last date you can drop a class from your schedule) is 2 or 3 weeks before the end of term; you could go to a class for 11 weeks, decide you're not going to pass, and drop the class on Drop Date, thus avoiding actually failing the class. Sophomores also have an option where they can designate one of their classes "exploratory", and if they don't like the grade at the end of the class, they can have it wiped from their record.</p>

<p>There's also a lot of academic and personal support through the [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/arc/%5DAcademic"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/arc/]Academic&lt;/a> Resource Center](<a href="http://www.mbta.com%5DT%5B/url"&gt;http://www.mbta.com) and the Counseling</a> Deans, and very little stigma against using those resources. (Last spring Adam got the flu the weekend before finals, and he went to the counseling deans, who gave him a pass to delay his finals for four weeks. Just like that. Good deal.)</p>

<p>I've had a UROP since first term sophomore year (which played a huge role in my recent grad school acceptances, I am wise enough to realize). I've written about what I do at work [here[/url</a>] and sort of [url=<a href="http://mollie.mitblogs.com/archives/2005/12/on_being_a_lab.html%5Dhere%5B/url"&gt;http://mollie.mitblogs.com/archives/2005/12/on_being_a_lab.html]here[/url&lt;/a&gt;]. My boyfriend has had a UROP since about two weeks after he got here freshman year; certainly not all freshman get UROPs, but it's not unusual to be a freshman with a UROP either.</p>

<p>I think the big things in MIT extracurriculars are [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/life/category/arts.html#links%5Dmusical%5B/url"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/life/category/arts.html#links]musical[/url&lt;/a&gt;] -- lots of people participate in (or are groupies of!) a capella groups like the Logarhythms, Chorallaries, and Resonance. There are also "only at MIT" extracurriculars here like [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/assassin/www/%5DAssassin's"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/assassin/www/]Assassin's&lt;/a> Guild](<a href="http://mollie.mitblogs.com/archives/2005/09/to_a_mouse_or_n.html%5Dhere%5B/url"&gt;http://mollie.mitblogs.com/archives/2005/09/to_a_mouse_or_n.html).&lt;/p>

<p>As for the DARPA challenge... I'll have to ask my boyfriend and get back to you. It seems like there's been a real dearth of entries into national contests of late (although Adam and his friend Carl are supposedly building lots of tiny planes to enter a micro-UAV competition sometime next year). I don't know precisely why that is.</p>

<p>Pollution. The Charles River, which runs right by campus, is pretty polluted -- people on the crew team tell stories about getting weird rashes after falling into it. I saw on the news recently that somebody in the government was promising to clean it up. We'll see. There's a beach (Wonderland) accessible by T that people like to go to, and I think it's okay pollution-wise, but the Charles is kind of icky (come on, there's an entire song about it called Dirty</a> Water!).</p>

19

<p>wow. thank you for your detailed and helpful answer!
Do you, by any chance, know more about the band / orchestra program @ MIT? I play the clarinet, and would like to continue that.
Thanks!</p>

20

<p>wow lots of answers, thanks mollie!</p>

<p>yeahh im looking forward to joining a capella groups, tho is it hard to get in frosh year? i did all-state but i heard it's competitive :P</p>

<p>Also, do most dorm rooms have 2 ppl per room? some singles? bigger ones? </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>