<p>sure we all want to get into prestigious schools, but what are they really like, behind the name?
At first, my guess was that MIT was a nerd school with the 'average joe' being a 4.5/1600/calculusCD highschool student, but maybe theres normal people too?
I also heard its a lot of hard work (of course), but is it BEYOND the "hard work" of other schools.. say stanford, but that much? </p>
<p>PLEASE GIVE SOME INSIGHT ON CAMPUS LIFE: study time / difficulty / personality of students / etc.</p>
<p>this is assuming you major in science, not "english" at MIT? thanks.</p>
<p>define "normal", please. as for how the workload stacks up against other schools, i don't know, i haven't been there. the rest of the board has a lot of threads covering various aspects of student life, feel free to look around and come back with more specific questions? perhaps i'm having problems guessing what you're going for, there. and <em>puts on pedant hat</em> the closest you'll come to an english major at MIT is Writing or Literature, courses 21W and 21L.[/pedant]</p>
<p>One of the biggest things that you'll get at MIT is because of the workload, people can't pretend they're the smartest anymore. This strips most of people of the personality they had in high school, which is "I'm the smart kid." For some, this leaves them with no personality, but for most, there is something lurking there that was just previously outstripped by the fact that you finished the AP BC calc exam in 10th grade in 45 minutes. Personally, I do a lot more singing and theater here than I did in high school because I don't feel like I'm a math/science kid who's out of his element. We're all math/science kids, but I'm one of those who also sings. </p>
<p>People (including myself) b*tch about the workload, but it does a very good job of keeping our egos in check. I suspect with a lighter workload, we'd wonder why there were so many arrogant jerks here. If you're working all day, you don't have time to be an arrogant jerk.</p>
<p>Quaker - that's why I want to go there. I want to be surrounded by kids like myself. It will take away the "i'm smart and breeze through" attitude because everybody there did breeze in high school.</p>
<p>I was actually accpeted into MIT and plan togo there as a course 15 major (management). Las t weekend I went to the capues preview weekend with low expectations, basically waiting to see Asians everywhere. I DID see Asians everywhere but I also met the amazing people from the Association of Puerto Rican students. They showed me that MITcould be fun, but that you DID have to study in order to have good grades.</p>
<p>quakerboy...from your SN, im suspecting that at one time penn was your first choice? im deciding between wharton and mit for a business/management major, and im just curious to know what made you choose mit?</p>