<p>Who is the smartest undergrad student that you've met or heard of?</p>
<p>I knew a lot of really smart undergrads at MIT, by a lot of different standards – people who took massively ridiculous courseloads, people who graduated with perfect GPAs, people who discovered fabulous things in their UROPs, people who got into the top graduate programs and scholarship programs in their fields after graduation. </p>
<p>But I don’t know that I could pick one of those people as the smartest person I knew at MIT. For one thing, it’s tough to decide which of those things is most important in deciding who’s smartest. For another, you don’t learn many of those things, even about your friends, easily. Nobody talks about his or her GPA voluntarily, and you might know that somebody was doing a UROP or applying to graduate school, but people don’t really talk about their accomplishments freely.</p>
<p>Thanks for your response.</p>
<p>It’s amazing to think people can graduate from MIT with a 5.0. That’s insane.</p>
<p>And I do admire the modesty which you described of MIT students.</p>
<p>Thanks again.</p>
<p>Smartest undergrad that I’ve heard of?</p>
<p>That would probably be Feynman back in '39. Either that or Robert Woodward, who managed to finish a B.S. and PhD in a year also in the 30’s. Both won Nobel Prizes. Woodward would have won a second Nobel Prize had he lived a little longer than 63–Roald Hoffman won the Nobel for a project that he worked on jointly with Woodward but Woodward had already passed away.</p>
<p>You may not recognize Hoffman’s name, but you may recognize him from those chemistry videos.</p>
<p>This guy got his bachelors and phd in one year? What?! I am an insignificant meat-pile</p>
<p>(According to Wikipedia) he entered MIT in year one, then dropped out after a year. Then he came back the next year (when his old classmates were juniors). He got his bachelor’s that year, then the NEXT year he got his PhD at the same time his original class was getting their bachelors’ degrees.</p>
<p>“It’s amazing to think people can graduate from MIT with a 5.0. That’s insane.”
Um… MIT GPA is out of 5, I believe.</p>
<p>Which is why I said MIT students can graduate with a 5.0 GPA.</p>
<p>If you take 5.12 in the spring, you’ll hear the Woodward story - he’s still regarded as being the best synthesis chemist that has ever lived (read about how he synthesized Vitamin B12). In terms of MIT though, the story as far as I remember was that he entered MIT as a freshman, and then requested to work in a lab. Back then, UROPs didn’t exist, and only grad students could work in the labs. After a lot of persistent nagging, however, a lab finally gave in and let him work in the lab on a probationary status. Woodward proved his worth, however, by completing several difficult, grad-level organic syntheses that he learned on his own in high school. The PI became very impressed by him, and allowed him to work in the lab whenever he wanted. However, he became so engrossed in his research that he started neglecting his normal classes, and actually failed out of MIT during his first year. He petitioned to return however, and compensated for his year by taking on an insane amount of classes (12 or 15) during his first semester back, and compensated for all of the classes that he failed during his freshman year in one term. In fact, he compensated so well that he received his BS in two semesters (aside: they must not have as many GIR requirements back then as we do now =p), and then obtained a doctorate in the following year.</p>
<p>…if that’s not smart, I don’t know what is.</p>
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<p>I know at least 5 in my class. I don’t think it’s that rare. Even 4.9s I think are pretty common. It’s much easier to do this in certain majors than others, though.</p>
<p>One thing that makes 5.0 more common here than say, 4.0 at Harvard is because we don’t have +/-s on the formal transcript. At a normal school with +/- grading, even a single A- can ruin your chances, whereas here you just need to make it into the A range for every class (still, not trivial by any means, however).</p>
<p>Do u guys think its easier to get better grades in MIT than Caltech? Considering the latter’s notorious core?</p>
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<p>It depends on your strengths and, in some cases, your major.</p>
<p>If you aren’t good at theory, than being forced to take quantum mechanics plus other theory-heavy classes will be harder. For me, theory was much easier than the more applied parts of classes (i.e., engineering lab, programming.) If you think that a class like abstract algebra is fun, then this won’t make it harder. </p>
<p>Chem E is notoriously hard at Caltech. Chem E at MIT is a bear as well, but given the anecdotal evidence of it being impossible at Caltech (and given the strength of the student body), it may be harder there. I think aerospace engineering is probably harder at MIT. Other majors? Probably about the same. Physics has lightened up the required electives recently to offer flexibility, but they’ve still got Junior Lab. I have no proof of this, but the lab classes may be harder at MIT.</p>
<p>Some of your core will be taken on pass/fail at both Caltech and MIT, so that may impact it.</p>
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<p>Think about it this way. If you are able to meet the challenge in one tough class inn your major and get a solid “A”, it’s likely you will be able to do it in other classes. That, of course, assumes that some required electives don’t assess skills that may be weaknesses (thermo may be tough for some bio majors if they aren’t good at physics/math.)</p>
<p>Some people, though, may get a 5.0 in the classes they need to graduate, but may further challenge themselves by taking other tough classes and may lower their GPA.</p>
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<p>If you want “insane” undergrads from MIT, just look at MIT’s faculty and see if anyone was an undergrad there. In my own school, I’ve heard of a good number of professors with the above kind of background – e.g. graduating with a PhD in math in a year, etc. MIT definitely would have plenty of those. Though I should mention, I’ve also heard of professors who were not totally insane (but very strong…in a more regular way) as undergrads but turned out to be insanely successful researchers.</p>
<p>I don’t know any hard stats, but I think a decent number of MIT faculty in engineering went to MIT as undergrads – some are even MIT cubed (SB, SM, PhD). </p>
<p>My husband’s favorite professor is MIT cubed, and he was awarded his bachelor’s and master’s concurrently in 1983, then his PhD in 1985. Crazy. </p>
<p>Another of the advisors to my husband’s company, a really gifted aircraft designer, took seventeen years to get his bachelor’s in course 16. It’s not that he had trouble with acing his classes, he just kept taking time off to design interesting things (e.g. [Daedalus](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus]Daedalus[/url]”>MIT Daedalus - Wikipedia)</a>), and by the time he would get serious about going to classes again, he’d find there was a new set of requirements to fulfill before he could graduate. There are a number of people like him who never let school interfere with their education.</p>
<p>How is that possible, to get SB/SM/PhD in a couple years? Do they just take like 870462 classes in that time, and how does that fit in their schedule lol? Do they usually already know the material?</p>
<p>Jobbin, these people aren’t just people whose parents made them work hard or something, they’re prodigiously crazy. Think about it – to get a PhD in something, you probably have some course requirements and have to pass a qualifying exam or two, and then really all you need to do is do your dissertation. A smart person with something of a decent head start could ver well do the non-dissertation work in a year, though this isn’t a sign of brilliance. However…</p>
<p>Some people are abnormally crazy; they were just beasts and probably didn’t just learn the material out of pushing themselves, but are the types of people who can read absurdly difficult books and master them in a small fraction of the time it would take someone like me, or even someone much brighter than I am. They may have solved something as a high schooler that could be the dissertation of topic of someone doing a PhD at MIT, i.e. something which takes absurd background, creativity, etc. </p>
<p>Classes are very easy once you know volumes beyond what is done in them.</p>
<p>Woodward used to say that he solved the synthesis of quinine when he was 12 or 13 (in his head.) For reference, the synthesis that Woodward would later perform in his lab was considered a milestone in organic chemistry.</p>
<p>Why did he do this? To prove that the rest of us our ‘insignificant meat-piles’, of course.</p>
<p>Sorry people.</p>
<p>On a serious note, one thing about PhD’s is if you find something really significant you don’t have to stay the usual amount of time (if this was the result of your own original ideas.) An example is Claude Shannon, who first applied Boolean logic to circuits. It was his master’s thesis at MIT, but they just gave him the PhD too and sent him on his way. </p>
<p>Sometimes, really significant projects aren’t necessarily time intensive.</p>
<p>Of course, synthesis is usually an exception to this rule, proving once again that we are all insignificant meat-piles (especially DoinSchool.)</p>
<p>This particular course 16 professor (he of the '83 SB/SM and '85 PhD) was, at least for a time, on a modified schedule so he could work more often – I think it was that he was on a 28-hour day or something. Even now, he works really hard: he’s never married, and he often sleeps in his office. Sometimes we see him in LaVerde’s. We think maybe all he eats is apples.</p>
<p>Really phenomenally productive scientists and engineers tend to be able to work incredibly hard for years at a time, and to be uninterested in work/life balance. It’s not the choice everybody wants to make, but not everybody gets a Nobel Prize. Or tenure.</p>
<p>EDIT:
And one thing many people don’t understand about grad school is that it’s not really time-based or course-based the way high school or undergrad is. You more or less graduate when your thesis committee says you can graduate. It might take two years. It might take twelve.</p>