<p>Thanks for all the responses to my questions. It’s possible that one of my teachers has little to backup her answer with, but my other teacher actually had a friend who transferred out of MIT due to the competitiveness. Apparently, the final straw for his friend was when he missed a class and asked a classmate for notes. After realizing the notes were from another lecture, he confronted his classmate, who replied that he had given him the wrong notes on purpose. However, I’m now convinced after reading these responses that this was an isolated incident that could happen at any college, and this does not accurately reflect the overall culture of MIT.</p>
<p>As for my question of “What don’t you like about MIT”, I appreciate your response. Are there any other negative aspects?</p>
<p>P.S. I’ve been admitted into MIT and I’m probably going to accept the admission offer, but I just want to know what I’m getting myself into. I absolutely loved CPW, but I’m not sure how accurate my impressions of MIT can be from four days of having fun.</p>
<p>Haha, thanks CalAlum. I thought about linking to that IHTFP blog entry. I like to think I covered the “omg MIT is hard” line in my blog pretty well. =)</p>
<p>I think that there is a real emphasis on taking steps designed to reduce the competitiveness of the institution. For example, MIT does not have different classes of degree (cum laude, summa cum laude, etc.). There is a binary distinction, you either graduated from MIT or you didn’t. MIT could easily introduce measures that would further distinguish between students but they deliberately do not, in an effort to preserve the collaborative environment on campus. The MIT culture is about pushing yourself and about working with others. The ability to designate a class in your junior or senior years as pass/fail is designed to allow undergraduate students to experiment with graduate level seminars in areas that interest them without fear of the advanced course destroying their academic record. I see this as another step designed to reduce the competitiveness on campus. MIT has many faults, but a hyper-competitive environment is most assuredly not one of them.</p>
<p>My daughter is trying to accept MIT’s offer, but they’re asking for expected student contribution and expected family contribution from her 2nd choice school… The school didn’t break it down; only told us what they would offer.</p>
<p>MIT’s on-line form won’t allow her to continue without these entries. What do we do?</p>
<p>I know a lot of people say you get to “choose” where you will live… but I have heard of people who don’t get their first choice of dorm. I visited during CPW and I think I would like to live in Baker- how likely is it that one will get their first choice?</p>
<p>It depends on the dorm and a lot on just the year. This year, for Baker, about 300 people picked it as its first choice and 100 people got temped there and I think 7 people were able to move in after the readjustment lottery. But Baker is usually the toughest dorm to get into, most of the others aren’t this bad.</p>
<p>@selter01: fair point. Students get a say in where they’d like to live, but it’s not entirely accurate to say that they get to “choose.” Baker tends to be very popular, but the exact stats (and therefore chances of getting into any particular dorm) change a lot from year to year. Typically most people get into one of their top 3ish. If you’d like to get a general idea, the Tech always writes an article about the results of the summer housing lottery (most popular choices, percentage of students to get their first choice, etc) and another one about the readjustment lottery (numbers of students requesting to move out of and into each dorm). If you go to their website (tt.mit.edu) and search for “housing lottery” you can pretty easily find numbers from the past couple of years.</p>
<p>Bumping this thread – any further questions? I know people had questions that didn’t get answered when I co-hosted the admitted student webchat the other night. :)</p>
<p>I think there is a little grade deflation here, but to be honest, the level of grade deflation depends entirely on YOU. I know people taking 6+ classes, take difficult grad level classes, double major in difficult majors (ummm. let’s say nuclear engineering + Physics), and end up having to work like crazy. There are people who take 4 classes, cherry pick their class so they don’t end up with 2 hard classes in the same semester (many of them being premed), and cruise along with not much worries (and they are by no means geniuses). You have a lot of control over how hard your life will be here. If you are part of the latter category, I would say grade deflation is definitely not an issue. Heck, if I was premed, I would easily get a 5.0 by following that strategy. It’s just such path does not appeal to me, and I enjoy learning difficult subjects and be challenged to my limits.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if the webcast is available somewhere. I would actually like to see it myself – I was aware at the time that I was talking with my hands a lot, and I want to see exactly how much I was talking with my hands. :)</p>
<p>Others have been speaking to GPA concerns specifically as they relate to professional school admissions (medical school, dental school, law school, etc.), so I can speak a little to graduate school (master’s, PhD) admissions. In short, if you go to MIT, your GPA will not be a factor in graduate school admissions so long as it is sufficiently okay. </p>
<p>Graduate schools select for future scholars in a particular field, so you are unquestionably better off for graduate school admissions getting a B average from MIT with stellar research and strong recommendation letters from professors who have supervised you in a research context than you would be getting straight A’s (from MIT or elsewhere) with no or poor research experience. GPA is a very weak factor in graduate school admissions for candidates who come from strong academic schools.</p>
<p>About 50% of MIT students go to graduate/professional school directly upon graduation each year, and about another 30% go back for an advanced degree at some point later. The most common graduate school destinations of MIT alums are usually MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Caltech (not always in that order, but always MIT first by a long shot). MIT alums are very successful in their graduate and professional school applications.</p>
<p>This great advice might require some modification for fields like math (which are really pen and paper + discussion type fields, what some like to call “theory”), simply because a lot of professional mathematicians are of the view that depending on the field, undergrad time is best spent learning fundamentals extremely well (at the expense of getting research experience), i.e. with a view towards how they show up in the future. Fundamental ideas are not presented on accident – somehow one of the most important things is to see how they recur in various situations.</p>
<p>This might be because by nature, what you’re doing in math research is figuring out important objects, classifying them, using certain methodologies to study other objects, etc, and seeing deeply how basic things fit together in context of what mathematicians actually do might be one of the most important things, or so some of the scholars say. </p>
<p>I think in this field, and perhaps in other theoretical fields, mastering fundamental classes <em>and</em> knowing faculty who can speak to your enthusiasm and potential for future scholarly work are considered the best indicators.</p>
<p>This means that if MIT hoses you over with too much, then it could be better to avoid. But from what I know of MIT’s math department, it’s a friendly environment conducive to doing the things I said above, and the letters from its faculty will be taken very seriously by colleagues in graduate admissions. Almost always, academics trust reputed academics’ words over most other things, and so this feedback can be invaluable support to MIT undergraduates when application time comes. I think maintaining a solid schedule in terms of things like classes is still important, but things like standardized test scores would matter considerably less for a highly reputed “big name” school.</p>
<p>Math and theoretical physics students who gain admission at the top schools tend to be the ones with the 5.0’s. However, those people at MIT are also the ones who do ridiculous research and even published (which is pretty hard, because the learning curve is very high for theoretical physics). I’ve heard getting in Harvard theoretical physics PhD program, you pretty much have to come from a pretty decent undergrad (hint: MIT, Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard, Princeton, caltech), get pretty much close to perfect GPA in you physics/math classes, and IN ADDITION, have done successful research. Surprisingly, quite a few MIT’ers meet that criteria.</p>
<p>Right, the main things for those programs seem to be having a great undergraduate place of origin, so that your letters really mean something, having potentially worked on independent projects, and having a strong schedule. </p>
<p>The reason I say you can probably do without “research” is that doing something original and also meaningful may require insane time, along with the brilliance, and overdoing it may end up being counterproductive. I know at least people get into Berkeley, Stanford, Chicago, Princeton, even MIT for math without publishing anything particularly ridiculous, but with very exceptionally stellar mastery of the subjects and terrific promise indicated by famous faculty.</p>
<p>Having a successful REU cannot hurt of course.</p>
<p>Harvard in math may be harder to get into than these…</p>
<p>How Much Does the Kind of High school is taken in account ?
Like ( opportunities at school, the quality of education at the enrolled highschool … )</p>
<p>If you get a 5 on one of the AP English exams, you do not have to take the freshman essay evaluation (FEE) and can take any humanities course you would like to take first semester. If you get a 5 on any humanities/social science AP exam, you will earn 9 units of general elective credit toward your degree.</p>
<p>
For admissions purposes? Or after students have been admitted?</p>
<p>MIT freshmen come to MIT with a rather wide range of academic preparedness for MIT-level study. I was one of those who came with a very weak high school background, and I felt that freshman year was a big leveler for me – first semester, I really struggled to learn physics in classes where most of my classmates had “only” gotten a 4 on the AP Physics test. But first semester is pass-no record, and I passed all of my classes and was much better prepared for second semester. After freshman year, very few people have seen any of the material presented before, so I felt on equal footing with my better-prepared classmates.</p>