<p>Sakky, the things you have said apply to many MIT students. Also they do not apply to many MIT students. It seems to me that the people defining MIT culture are the ones your little assertions do not apply to.</p>
<p>@Sakky: While your arguments would be valid for most universities, schools like MIT and Caltech are specifically geared to accelerate the smartest students. MIT is not designed to serve the lowest common denominator. Instead, the institute is designed to make it possible for the smartest people to race ahead at an unimaginable rate.</p>
<p>Now of course, supporting infrastructure has been developed to help students, because sometimes people slip and fall. But consistantly failing all of your courses? I do not think people considering Sloan should go to Sloan because they can't handle the difficulty of other subjects. They should be going to Sloan because they want to study buisness/management. You're making it sound like Sloan is a school of dumb people who failed out of course 6/8/18/etc. This is definetely not the case.</p>
<p>IMO, MIT is not designed for people who are on the borderline of failing out. These are rare cases, and these people have to make tough decisions. But ultimately the institute is filled by people who are indeed succeeding and going on to graduate in their desired fields. And anyone coming to MIT or Caltech should know ahead of time that they are taking a risk.</p>
<p>So hey guys... isn't the topic of this post "What do you dislike about MIT?" It's disrespectful to veer off subject. Accept the "most" quantifier and realize that the rebutting opinions are of ONE mind, not the aggregate.</p>
<p>Anyway. It'd be nice reading some relevant posts on this topics in order for me to see whether or not I should still cry over the fact that I got waitlisted. =)</p>
<p>Actually this is among the more interesting topics on the forum right now. Most of the things people would post about what they dislike are small inconsequential things anyway that wouldn't/shouldn't affect whether or not you come here (and if you do come here, you probably can't change these things so it doesn't matter anyway). On the other hand, it's interesting to see people debate some of the more murky topics. Consider the veering-off-topic to be an interesting aside.</p>
<p>Sakky, earlier you said something like "most MIT students aren't following their dreams." I'm sorry, but BS. This is not true for me, or most people I know at this school right now.</p>
<p>I hesitate to call it a "dream," since I never had some "dream" from a young age of what to do with my life, since my interests have changed many times. But I am doing something that I love to do, and yes it's hard. But I would never just switch to Sloan, because honestly, I think management is a joke. Also, I can quite honestly tell you that I do not give a you-know-what about how much money I make when I graduate. My parents make far less money than I am expected to after graduation, and my family has a relatively nice house, and a couple of cars, and we eat food, and sometimes buy nice things, all on a salary that you (and Sloan graduates) would probably laugh at. My parents did not go to college.</p>
<p>I'm likely to make AT LEAST twice as much money as my parents when I get into my career, and I honestly cannot IMAGINE what I'm going to do with all that money.</p>
<p>
As has been mentioned many times, they are free to transfer to another school.</p>
<p> [quote=sakky] Hence, it's hard for me to come up with a scenario in which somebody at MIT would hate everything that Sloan has to offer. There are not that many requirements, you are largely free to piece together your own curricula, and the courses generally give you the freedom to work on projects that you like. Plus, like I said, you don't have to really worry about flunking out, the way you do in the hard-core tech majors. What's not to like?
What's "not to like" is that I want to be an engineer, and I find no interest in any of the things that Sloan has to offer. I have, in fact, considering transferring to a less "hardcore" college, several times, and quite seriously. I have actually researched the transfer requirements for some less rigorous colleges. I have NEVER considered switching to Sloan, because I don't like it.</p>
<p>You keep arguing that people want to have food on the table. Um, yes. However, you don't need to go to college to get a job which pays enough to put food on the table. See above. Most people go to college to learn something. People like you apparently go to college so they can buy a more expensive high-status car to show off to their neighbors.</p>
<p>And finally, you keep saying all of these things like "clearly, almost everyone thinks x" and "obviously, nearly all students prefer y," and I would just like to know exactly where you learned telepathy.</p>
<p>first, i don't understand these posts which object to the digression. this is a web forum, not the united nations.</p>
<p>second, sakky views the world through his own lens. for him, education is a means to an end, and money is the only end that "really matters in the real world". all those other things that people purport to care about, like enlightenment, intellectual stimulation, understanding the universe more deeply, and leaving behind a lasting contribution
[quote]
probably [do] create some internal psychological enjoyment for some people, but probably [aren't] going to be rewarded in terms of a higher salary
[/quote]
and that's enough for him to dismiss them as things that "don't really matter in the real world."</p>
<p>i think the general response to this is, you can feel free to live in your own little real world where all that is true. it's not a real world that's particularly relevant to most of us. and the fact that you keep repeating that "most people this" and "most people that" isn't fooling anyone, as Laura said. nobody thinks you have privileged epistemic access to other people's values and desires.</p>
<p>by the way, this business you keep bringing in about "what about those people who can't graduate course 6, isn't sloan great for them" is completely irrelevant to the discussion. we took issue with you NOT for saying that there should be a safety net for them (i agree with that), but for saying that the emphasis on intellectual rigor throughout the rest of MIT is a practically meaningless social fad.</p>
<p>I think this debate does relate to the OP's question. I personally dislike the fact that there are relatively few humanities majors at MIT. My daughter, an MIT student, feels the opposite way. She chose MIT because she wanted to immerse herself in a critical mass of people who are passionate/obsessed/fascinated with all things related to math, science, and engineering. When she attended Yale's campus preview week, she returned home saying, "There were no math classes on the schedule. Where was the physics? We went to debates and glee club performances." Personally, I would have chosen Yale in a heartbeat, but I am not my daughter. </p>
<p>The mathematician Paul Erdos used to say that when a student or colleague left the field of mathematics, the individual had "died". To some extent, a student who enters MIT committed to the idea of becoming an engineer, physicist, or mathematician and who then finds that he or she does not quite have the skills to attain that goal will probably find it psychologically difficult at MIT. It's easier to leave U.C. Berkeley's School of Engineering and major in business in the context of a campus of more than 30,000 students. It's easier to switch from a math major to literature at Harvard or Yale. In those schools, one can join a fairly large group of colleagues highly committed to the liberal arts. At MIT on the other hand, a student may trudge on through the math or engineering major simply to avoid the stigma of having "died." I do know of at least one MIT alum who did this, although this was several decades ago.</p>
<p>As for the "hardcore" issue, I'd say that my daughter wants to take a million classes, not because of any desire to be "hardcore" but because she's interested in several subject areas. Up until a month ago, she was going to double major in EECS and physics, but that has changed. She decided that physics was far more interesting, interesting enough that she'd like to go deeper into that field and sample related coursework along the way. Apparently no students have decried this decision as not "hardcore enough." That culture does not exist in her living group. </p>
<p>Switching to physics from a double major with EECS could be seen by some as a move that lowers her future earnings power. But our family, like others that have already posted here, believe that she should follow her own interests and dreams.</p>
<p>^^ So to sum up, there is really nothing that we dislike about MIT, as a match for our daughter. Quite the opposite... :-)</p>
<p>I don't know that I'm actually adding anything here, but I want to add my agreement with Laura that I'm following my dreams -- since about sixth grade, I haven't wanted to be anything other than a scientist. And here I am in graduate school with my MIT degree, making probably half (a third?) what I could be making in consulting. </p>
<p>But I have zero interest in doing consulting, or anything else that would make me more money, because the only thing I've ever wanted to do is become a scientist. If somebody told me I wasn't allowed to become a scientist, or if my thesis lab went belly-up, I would take my MIT and Harvard degrees and become a zookeeper.</p>
<p>To answer the question in the original post, I truly can't think of anything significant I disliked at MIT, except that there were only 24 hours in the day and there was so much more I wanted to do. Wait, I take that back: I disliked the freshmen on campus policy.</p>
<p>^^You guys think the freshman-on-campus represents a loss of freedom. What it really means for guys is that they don't have to spend a semester living in a house as a pledge with a bunch of upper classmen telling them what to do all the time.</p>
<p>As a current MIT undergrad student, Sakky's assertions are valid. As River Phoenix has said in post #61, they apply to many students and they don't apply to many students. The people in this forum think they can define the MIT culture for everyone at MIT. MIT has many ecosystems of students. There are MIT students who just solely want to make money with disregard to rigor (e.g. many Sloanies without a passion for studying management). There are MIT students who both want to study something rigorous and to get a really high paying job (e.g. course 6 i-bankers, traders, consultants). There are MIT students who want to study something rigorous and doesn't mind getting a low-paying job that involves their field of study (e.g. biologists, physicists, chemists). I have friends from each group.</p>
<p>I think many people do end up going for the money, but most people didn't go there with that mentality. It's more that they have a strong interest in math/science and want to get close Even if they think they might end up being a consultant later, their primary motivations are to get as close as they can to an elite academic level. It's sort of like wanting to be in the olympics. Yeah, if you go you have a higher chance of endorsements but that is not why you go or why you would feel good about doing well there. </p>
<p>There are easier ways to become a doctor or high-paying consultant than the Caltech/MIT route--take HYP for instance.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Hence, given that backdrop, it is entirely fair to examine a college in light of what economic opportunities it provides.** Most kids at MIT - and yes at Caltech - are there only because their parents believed that education leads to greater career success*, and, by extension, kids therefore inevitably absorb the linkage - real or imagined - between college and career. Furthermore, college ain't exactly cheap. **Parents are willing to financially support their kid's college education only if they believe that doing so will lead to greater economic success,* which therefore makes the education/career linkage even more salient. To pretend otherwise is to be willfully ignorant of the true motivations that drive higher education.
[/quote]
IMO, or rather IMKO 'the greater career success' != 'the greater economic success' necessarily.</p>
<p>soozievt, very well said! :)</p>
<p>
I offer my son as a related example.</p>
<p>He declared 18C and was doing fabulously well... and his heart wasn't in it. But I think he felt the pressure of the hardcore to stay there and slug it out. Instead he took a term off and took classes near home more closely allied to where his heart was. And returned to MIT this term as a Course IV (architecture) major. There was never any question in his mind of his leaving MIT and he wasn't anywhere near failing out. But he did have to go through Erdos's trauma of having "died" and it wasn't a trivial psychological exercise for him (even though he did have the skills to attain the mathematician goal: he just learned his goal was something else, and that voluntary switch was no less difficult). I do know that his heart is now in what he does, and that's what I need to know.</p>
<p>
[quote]
^^You guys think the freshman-on-campus represents a loss of freedom. What it really means for guys is that they don't have to spend a semester living in a house as a pledge with a bunch of upper classmen telling them what to do all the time.
[/quote]
I do think it represents a loss of freedom, but that's not really the primary reason I dislike it. </p>
<p>As a dorm resident, I dislike it because my entry would get a bunch of cool freshman guys each year who were gung-ho about contributing to our community during dorm rush (or who said they were in order to get a single), but then rushed a frat and disappeared completely from our community, because they spent all of their free time at the fraternity and usually slept there too.</p>
<p>If not for the freshmen on campus policy, we could have filled our open rooms with equally cool people who didn't just maintain a room in our dorm for appearance's sake.</p>
<p>ETA: to previouse post.</p>
<p>Having been through economic finantial strugle when first came to this land, I had to changed my field of study/interest (but through years I learn to love what I'm doing) to make a living. ... Now when we have means to provide our kid high education, I don't want to put any restrain on my kid's select study field (though, we did try to influence kid to chose traditional money making career when he is very young and we felt not fianantially safe ourself.). Like sz's D, my kid's chosen field is not the high pay one. But the top ranked schools of the field are all among the high COA wise.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You don't just go to college just for the sake of going to college. You go to college because you want to graduate and get a degree.
[/quote]
What about the knowlege? The analytical skills? The way of thinking? etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Whether or not everything after your first sentence is true, this doesn't make any sense. You said that sakky's assertions are valid, and then described 3 groups of people. Sakky has repeatedly said that there is only one (those who are in it for the money). In fact, he also said that no one at MIT fell into your third category. If anyone on this board is trying to define MIT culture for everyone (despite the actual MIT students who are providing themselves and friends as counterexamples), it's sakky.</p>
<p>Laura...bingo!</p>
<p>Laura, I think you've misunderstood. All I've said is that his assertions apply in the context of certain students at MIT. You don't think it's true? Then, I have nothing to say. The groups I've mentioned do exist. Just look at MIT Careers Office's graduating student survey, specifically the top ten employers and employers by department.</p>
<p>Sakky-"Huh indeed? Again the answer is simple - because you will graduate. Let's face it. You don't just go to college just for the sake of going to college. You go to college because you want to graduate and get a degree. "</p>
<p>I don't want to go to college to get a degree. Screw that. If it were possible to get into grad school without a BS then I would probalby do just that, unless I got the BS by doing what I wanted anyways. Caltech and MIT (along with other rigorous schools) were both up high on my list in terms of choice because of their academic rigor, and let me tell you, I honeslty do not care if I live in a **** hole for the rest of my life as long as I can do what I want to do, learn what I want to learn, and research what I want to research.</p>
<p>Money means nohting to me, and never has. So there's at least one person in this world that does not fit your assumptions of why one goes to college: it is most certailny not to get a degree. I go because I want to learn.</p>