What isn't good about MIT?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Certain characteristics are intrinsic to MIT, such as course rigor, a student body which is uniformly way on the right of the intelligence bell curve, and a primary focus on math, science and other technical subjects. If these characteristics bother you, then it’s not something wrong with MIT, but rather that you are not right for the school.</p>

<p>However, one can question whether MIT goes about achieving such intrinsic factors–for example, even if one is completely consumed with work, it may be that some time should be devoted to connecting different concepts rather than just volumes of problem sets (i.e., the firehose.)</p>

<p>Secondly, there are things which aren’t linked to a school’s mission statement, but which (1) most reasonable people would think are bad, or (2) there are differences of agreement. Harvard’s dorms have a cockroach problem, apparently–most people would agree that this is bad, though some would just not care that much. With regard to #2, I think fraternities at MIT have too much power on campus, and receive too much support from the admin to keep them going. Other people disagree with that. However, frats aren’t fundamentally linked to MIT’s mission statement, so I think whether they should be so prevalent is open for debate.</p>

<p>And, of course, there are things which people may prioritize differently. The dorms are better almost anywhere. But for some, like Mollie, this is an insignificant factor.</p>

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<p>I’m not talking about classes that teach people about “life”. I’m talking about the culture of MIT itself. </p>

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<p>Those characteristics don’t bother me. I actually thrive in this type of atmosphere. </p>

<p>However, I think MIT is lacking something, and I touched a bit on it in my last post. Maybe it’s that noone at MIT ever goes to sport events, so we never really have much in terms of school pride. Sure, we are connected because we all share the experience of being “hosed”. We play the “I am more hosed than you” game. But a large proportion of people only hang out with a certain, rather exclusive group. I am talking about fraternities, sororities, living groups, etc. The campus seldom feels unified. The Boston Bombing is one of the rare events that brought people closer.</p>

<p>To answer PiperXP’s question on why I think learning about how to interact in groups should be worthwhile, it’s because the real life requires it. Maybe I don’t have the right to say much since I’m still a student. But from my experience, many students that graduate from MIT don’t continue on in academia. Even if they do, learning how to work in teams (esp those where people come from different backgrounds and have different skillsets) is critical. Traversing social dynamics in the real world is tricky. This may not be a problem if everyone you interact with is a MIT alum, but that will almost never be the case. </p>

<p>So what happens if you’re working or interacting with a group of people whose backgrounds may not be as technical? Are you just going to do all the problems yourself, because you can’t trust the other guys to do them? Are you just going to micromanage everything and annoy everyone? How do you interact with and become close friends with someone who majored in say… Philosophy? Or better yet… why bother talking to these people at all?</p>

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<p>But just like how you can learn to be an engineer, you can learn to be a leader. Sure, there’s a certain threshold you have to reach, but I guarantee you that most people at MIT passes that threshold. Now I’m not saying that everyone at MIT can learn to be a CEO, I’m arguing that everyone at MIT can learn to be more articulate, more orate, more aware. But you can’t do that if 1) you don’t put in the effort to learn and practice, and 2) you think it’s not helpful. And that’s the issue I am trying to address. Too many people on campus think that soft skills are not worth pursuing, and that hard skills can get them anywhere. In today’s society, it simply isn’t true.</p>

<p>My point is that… no college is perfect. I gave my thoughts on what I think is lacking at MIT. I’m not saying that MIT should /teach/ you how to do those all those things I mentioned. I am saying that MIT students need to be more aware of the bubble that we live in. That the world is not a meritocracy. I want the people I go to school with to be the next generation of leaders in this world. Simply being smart only gets you halfway there.</p>

<p>Last thing: If you are a prospective applicant, don’t let this scare you into not applying! I do not regret coming to MIT because I believe it offers things no other school does. The issues I mentioned is just a side effect of the same reasons I chose MIT for. If you want a complete education in STEM, there is no better school to do it at. It’s just that there is always room for improvement.</p>

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<p>I just want to expand on this a bit more because I think drug use is serious enough that it can deter people from considering MIT. But one things to keep in mind is that MIT is very diverse, and while there may be people that use drugs, there are also those that do not. My experience has been almost the exact opposite of sbjdorlo’s son’s. I can say pretty confidently that at least 90% of my friends at MIT have never done any illegal drugs. A large portion have either abstained from alcohol their whole lives, or at least until they were 21. Avoiding drug use, and even alcohol use, is not too hard.</p>

<p>FWIW, based on my experience of attending campus sponsored events at MIT and at other schools, drug use at MIT seems to be significantly less than at other schools. I haven’t been to enough to make a strong judgement either way though.</p>

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<p>I agree with you. In fact, even the former MIT president, in a moment of rare frankness, remarked that he thought the housing system was divisive.</p>

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<p>iceui, I don’t actually disagree with you, but it’s not clear to me that other top universities do a better job teaching STEM students how to work on non-technical problems, or how to acquire the kind of soft skill set that leads to career success. </p>

<p>Harvard is the “other top university” I know best, obviously, and I didn’t see the students in my lab, or students in classes I TA’ed, being better than MIT students in that regard. So I’m not sure whether I think the perception of a difference comes from different student bodies (more well-connected, business-savvy students at Harvard to begin with) or whether it’s from differing major choices (proportionally fewer STEM majors at Harvard). Could be both, of course.</p>

<p>At any rate, I think this is a major issue, though a difficult one to address didactically. Even for students who do want to continue on an academic path, it’s better to learn earlier that academia is deeply political, and that skills in presentation, networking, and showmanship are crucial for success. But much of that knowledge is unspoken.</p>

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<p>Oh but I think the housing is one of the very <em>best</em> things about MIT, collegealum, and one reason that I felt ok about seeing my son head off to school 3000 miles away. His dorm and living community (and his involvement in a Christian group on campus) help keep him sane when he gets no sleep, feels overly stressed, tackles too much, and so one. </p>

<p>Perhaps it is divisive in one way but that doesn’t mean it has to be. My son’s girlfriend doesn’t live in his dorm, isn’t in his major, is on a very different track but they happen to meet. He has friends who are <em>very</em> different from him (thus the exposure to significant drugs and alcohol) but that is a great part of MIT, too; people of various backgrounds <em>do</em> interact. </p>

<p>shravas, I am sure drugs can be avoided; I am not sure my son wants to hide away from it all since he has friends who struggle with drugs and alcohol, but I am sure he’s probably being cautious about too much exposure. I’m not sure…</p>

<p>I visited Princeton and Penn; at those schools, I saw a lot more self-segregation than at MIT. I think finding “your people”, yet being a part of a larger campus interacting in classes, ECs, and so on, is what makes MITs special.</p>

<p>I asked my son if most of his friends are well off and he said yes. He is not. I could see it being a potential problem, but it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to my son and he is still able to make certain connections because he’s a super extrovert and knows a whole lot of people.</p>

<p>Mollie and iceui bring up a great point but I know nothing about it.</p>

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<p>I think there are two aspects of dorms that are being conflated here although they are very distinct: (1) the physical quality of dorms and (2) the living group aspect of dorms. I’m not sure but I think collegealum was referring to (1) while sbjdorl was talking about (2). I think most people would agree that the physical state of dorms at MIT is not great although perhaps acceptable. Most people at MIT seem to really like their living groups although there are still concerns if you get assigned to a living group you don’t like, the homogeneity of living groups, and whether frats have too much influence. (1) is something that can mostly objectively assessed as good or bad while (2) is more subjective. Although even with (2) there are can more objective components like whether the process for living groups is assignments is optimal or not.</p>

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<p>I always appreciated posts like this… not because they are negative but because you get to look at University a different way…I wish I could answer your question but I can’t since I don’t know the area… I would expect things like, its hard for my parents or friends to find a place to park. or parking around Boston or Cambridge just stinks. or walking to class in the winter is tough. Rats scare me …so I’m always thinking about urban creatures running around. After my visit to Cornell, I would have said the Hills look like they would be a pain for walking to class.</p>

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<p>Rose Bowl, Caltech, Harvy Mudd hacks … Show a lot of school pride. Just not the pride you are interested in seeing.</p>

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<p>In some respects, the tightness of the dorms (some say that students are more committed to their dorm than the University) shows a huge amount of group interaction.</p>

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<p>Not true. Not everyone can be an engineer, and not everyone can be a leader. You can take engineering and leadership classes, but if you don’t have the “smarts” in that area, you can only go so far. The Admissions Representative said: “You don’t have to love math to succeed at MIT, but you can’t hate it either”. Those who hate math shouldn’t be engineers. There are many people who shouldn’t be leaders (look up Peter Principle).</p>

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<p>I don’t think one time events that happened a long time ago or pranks that necessarily involve a small amount of students are equivalent to sporting events at other schools. Close living groups are probably closer to MIT’s equivalent.</p>

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<p>The small amount of players on the field are equivalent to the few people performing the hack.</p>

<p>The spectators watching the sport are equivalent to the MIT student body that takes pride in the performers.</p>

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<p>FYI: I could not find overlap in the top ranked universities, and the top funnest ones. The closest I could find is U Penn and Penn State.</p>

<p>I’m guessing you would say that the funnest ones are the ones that show a lot of school spirit.</p>

<p>[QS</a> World University Rankings 2013 | Top Universities](<a href=“QS World University Rankings 2014: Top Global Universities | Top Universities”>QS World University Rankings 2014: Top Global Universities | Top Universities)</p>

<p>[The</a> 20 Most Fun Colleges In America - Business Insider](<a href=“http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-most-fun-colleges-in-america-2013-8]The”>The 20 Most Fun Colleges in America)</p>

<p>I will admit that a lot of the funnest colleges have top ranked engineering programs.</p>

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<p>This is a really good question. For us and my daughter (now taking her gap year but headed to MIT in the Fall of 2014) the answer came down to the following, although I would emphasize that I am speaking here as a parent and not for my daughter (who shared these concerns but to a lesser extent). </p>

<p>(1) Pressure and stress at MIT; and
(2) Many fewer humanities offerings and humanities students.</p>

<p>Obviously our daughter resolved any concerns in favor of attending MIT. She’s thrilled to have been accepted. We think it is going to be a fantastic place for her. But as others have said, MIT is very different from other schools and it is clearly not for everyone. So for others thinking through these issues, here are some thoughts and resources:</p>

<p>(1) Stress and pressure. This has been referred to in passing above, but it deserves more prominence, given that MIT students will cheerfully tell prospective students and parents that the unofficial motto of MIT is “IHTFP” which they say can mean on alternate days “I Have Truly Found Paradise” or “I Hate This F*****g Place”. </p>

<p>It is terrific that the MIT admissions office is so open about and unthreatened by people raising this concern, including maintaining on its own website the much read, admired and commented upon essay by Lydia K (“Meltdown”):<br>
[Meltdown</a> | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://www.mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/meltdown]Meltdown”>Meltdown | MIT Admissions)</p>

<p>There are many wonderful, helpful blog posts on the Admissions site. I just encourage prospective students and parents to include Lydia’s essay among the ones you read to round out your perspective. I also found it invaluable to read the December 7, 2012 issue of the MIT student newspaper (The Tech) that Lydia’s essay helped inspire discussing pressure at MIT in depth:
<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V132/PDF/N59.pdf[/url]”>http://tech.mit.edu/V132/PDF/N59.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For a parent the most troubling statistic cited in The Tech is not about the lack of sleep. It is that the self-confidence of MIT students reportedly tends to fall during their first few years at MIT (but rebounds later). In my conversations with the MIT leadership on campus I was extremely impressed with how seriously they take this issue and how hard they are working to build a supportive rather than “Who’s more hosed?” atmosphere. But it gives a parent pause.</p>

<p>I think this is a particular concern for students who attended relatively small schools and did very well, but are perhaps not used to an academic pressure-cooker environment. As one student described her first year at MIT when I met her at College Preview Weekend (CPW), “It was a supported slap in the face. They slapped me across the face, but they held my hand while doing it.” She loved MIT – but that kind of experience isn’t for everyone.</p>

<p>Again, it is admirable that MIT takes very concrete steps to give students time to adjust – most notably with the pass/no credit system for the first year. </p>

<p>(2) Many fewer humanities offerings and humanities students.</p>

<p>For people considering both MIT and other top schools like Univ. of Michigan it can be a shock to realize how big the gap is between them and MIT in terms of humanities offerings. I was stunned to be told during CPW that there were two History majors at MIT. Not two majors studying European History or two per class. Two. I raised this concern on College Confidential in a thread called “What if interests change? Liberal arts at MIT” and got some great advice and information including this link to the statistics for departmental majors at MIT: Web.mit.edu/registrar/stats/trots/index.html
For 2011-12 here are some of the statistics: Literature – 2 majors, Music and Theater – 2, Writing – 3.</p>

<p>It was argued at CPW that humanities majors get a lot of faculty attention. No doubt. It was also pointed out on the previous thread that many, many people at MIT are interested in History and other humanities subjects even if they don’t major in them and that some MIT humanities departments are among the best in the country, including Economics and Linguistics. It was also pointed out that you can cross-register for any class at Harvard. This clearly does happen at least for language classes which are pretty limited at MIT.</p>

<p>But at the end of the day, MIT is not Michigan with a great engineering program but also fantastic humanities with lots of majors in every conceivable field. And Michigan is not MIT with its more intimate campus, smaller classes, better faculty student ratio, et cetera.</p>

<p>Visit and Decide for Yourself – The last thing I would say is that I think it is very important for prospective students to visit MIT. We knew almost nothing about the school and almost didn’t visit. But when we did we almost immediately fell in love with the school. We really came to believe what MIT says about the “fit” at MIT: [The</a> Match Between You And MIT | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/match]The”>What we look for | MIT Admissions). In the end our daughter chose MIT (I think) because she felt at home there.</p>

<p>So go visit and see if you feel that way too.</p>

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<p>Very enlightening, forthright post Washdc.</p>

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<p>As an alumna and parent of a current student, I agree with most of Washdc’s observations. I would add the following.</p>

<p>Students at MIT are fascinated by technology, innovation, and quantitative problem solving and want to challenge themselves in a rigorous STEM training. For those kids, MIT has plenty of appropriate majors, ranging from engineering, economics, architecture, science, management, and humanities/social sciences. If you hate creativity combined with careful, thoughtful analysis, MIT is probably not a good match. </p>

<p>I found that the type of student that goes to MIT tends to be stressed due to internal pressures (the drive to achieve excellence, competing against oneself and not others) and would probably feel stress where ever s/he goes. MIT definitely feeds you from the fire hose, but it is to a receptive student body that hungers for knowledge and skills. It helps enormously to have all your friends and classmates in a similar situation, who can provide an understanding support group. (Admissions does an excellent job at finding nice kids.) It would have been frustrating to be drinking from a fire hose at a college where I was watching lots of carefree friends sipping tea with a pinky in the air.</p>

<p>Remind students entering MIT that they will be among the smartest kids in the world, and many will feel “dumb” for the first time in their lives. If they go in braced for that slap to one’s confidence, they will be fine and will learn to love being, at long last, among kids who have a similar thirst for learning. Likewise, warn your Seniors about to graduate MIT that most of the world isn’t like MIT students, and the adjustment upon leaving that intense, analytic environment is often just as jarring.</p>

<p>I majored in a science but my HASS concentration was in foreign languages at MIT, taking six semesters of two languages (one beginning, the other advanced). They were excellent, well taught classes, and I felt no need to go up Chuck River to a liberal arts college. Most 4 year engineering programs that I’ve seen only have scheduling space for about eight humanities classes anyway, and MIT offers enough variety to satisfy most students’ interests.</p>

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<p>I really don’t understand the whole “livings groups are divisive” thing. I’m not going to be friends with everyone on campus, or with everyone in my dorm, really. Not because I don’t like them, but just because it’s not logistically possible. There are only a certain amount of hours in the day. And, of that, even a smaller percentage you have time to have fun with your friends. You’re going to have to figure out which people make you happy and it’s not going to be everyone.</p>

<p>You’re going to eventually find a tribe somewhere, and what’s great about the MIT dorm system IMO is that it makes it easier from the start. Since you get to pick where you live from a variety of places, you have a really great set of people who are probably your kind of people that you live with to start.</p>

<p>As you navigate MIT, you definitely have plenty of opportunities make more friends outside of your livings groups. If you don’t, then that’s not MIT’s fault. But the awesome thing about the housing system is that you have a sort of home to back to. I really love that people stay in the same dorms/living groups, or even on the same floors, from year to year.</p>

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<p>You are closer than you think to understanding. The point of the living groups being divisive is that “i really love …”. Students become more bound (love) to their living group than the school. </p>

<p>A more common example is the Greek System. Let’s say that you belong to Alpha Beta Gamma (I have no idea if that is a frat or not), and ABG has chapters in colleges across the country. Sometimes that bond is stronger across chapters than the student’s bond to the school. Let’s say you are a hiring manager, and you have two candidates: One from the school you went to (but not a ABG member), and another from a different school, but is an ABG member from that school. You may prefer the ABG member over the student from your school.</p>

<p>Living group spirit becomes a problem when more thought is given to how we are different from the other dorm, than to how we are MIT.</p>

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But insofar as this is a problem (and like wellthatsokay, I have trouble seeing how it’s actually a problem except in the self-interested view of the administration), it’s also a problem in places where students don’t choose their living groups – at Harvard and Yale, for example, students have strong living-group pride despite the fact that their housing was assigned entirely or almost entirely randomly. The advantage at MIT is that there is no astroturf social engineering attempt to randomize students – you pick the living group in which you feel most at home. If students are going to feel an affiliation with a living group regardless of who picks it, why not allow maximal student choice?</p>

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<p>Although it is a problem if you don’t like the living group you end up with. This can either be because you didn’t get one of your top choices in various assignment algorithms (this year some freshmen in Macgregor got somewhat screwed over because the algorithm did not run correctly and there had to be some not-optimal manual corrections to fix the errors) or the group you thought you liked turned out to be not such a good fit. Also at Harvard you get to choose a block of people that you want to live with after your freshmen year so while which living group you get is mostly random the people you are living with (which is probably more important) is definitely not.</p>

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<p>If there were no astroturf social engineering on the part of the administration, the fraternity system would be a lot smaller. In casino terms, it’s designed so the “house wins.”</p>