Did anyone in real life or fiction (TV, movies, etc) make you think, “Yeah! Going to MIT would be cool!”
People who made me think MIT would be cool include the following:
Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR’s Car Talk (or Cah Talk!)
Tony Stark - aka Iron Man
Felicity Smoak from the TV show Arrow (“MIT Class of '09!” she proudly declares in one episode).
How bout you?
That one movie- “21,” that was based on the MIT blackjack team, I think.
I just remember thinking that MIT was full of students who could make it rich, fighting with evil professors. It was weird.
@NotYetEngineer I’ll have to rent that! I remember when it came out, but I never saw it. :-B
At the time, I thought it was an awesome film. Looking back, it was a bit weird (more melodramatic than was needed) but it was a fun film.
The culture is really, really awesome. Most movies or whatever don’t get the culture of ‘college’ right, but almost everyone understands that MIT is a place where smart people can collaborate to do cool stuff.
Richard Feynman in his book, “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman!”.
@rothstem I’m gonna order that!
Who exactly thinks MIT IS cool ? When I went there IHTFP was the motto. Not that a regret my education but “cool” does not describe it. GRIND describes it better.
But yes, if a student has a car and wants to wander into East Cambridge, maybe the one of the car guys will look over your junker! I did bring my junker to the Good News Garage, in East Cambridge. Its not the nicest part of Cambridge
and one of the Car Guys recently passed away. It was a great radio show, but in no way reflects an MIT undergrad experience!
I don’t remember, but there is a film of historical interest about the experience at MIT called “How to be First.” It was produced by the BBC in 1965 and is available on the web. It seemed to capture “something,” but it’s quite interesting for the time capsule effect. Just Google “how to be first MIT” and you will find it.
For me, the biggest allures of MIT were the atmosphere (it does take a specific type of student) and the quality of classes/teachers (even among top tier schools). While I ended up choosing to attend another university over MIT, there is no doubt MIT will always have a special place in my mind. If the circumstances had been even slightly different, I would probably be moving onto campus with the rest of the c/o 2019 this week.
@ZeeTee, my sister went to an Ivy undergrad and did her PhD in geophysics at MIT (joint Woods Hole program). Her take on the difference was that she thought the Ivies were generally professor-driven, whereas MIT was student-driven. The thought that at the Ivies students competed for access to the top professors, who had rock star status, but that at MIT, there were so many that they didn’t really stand out as much. She said the students at MIT were incredibly brilliant, and the professors practically “competed” among each other for them, and that students could initiate opportunities to a much greater degree. She felt that the biggest thing she got out of MIT was being around such brilliant students and being “pulled” by their gravitational field. This was an apples-to-oranges comparison in some respects (undergrad vs. grad), but I thought it was interesting.
The campus tour! I totally fell in love with MIT’s amazing, quirky achitecture and labs for research. I think it’s also really cool how almost everyone believes that math and science can do good for humanity just like me. Also I expected it to be a campus full of nerdy, isolated people, but it turns out they were all really collaborative, vibrant group of people.
Although my son is a great student, I’m not sure he has the “wow” factor to get in MIT undergrad (ie he didn’t build a nuclear reactor in the garage or anything - which even doing that doesn’t guarantee admission apparently).
Will Prob go to UA undergrad for NMF and maybe look at MIT for grad school later on (although I am sure that is competitive too).
When taking kid to Cambridge last week, taxi driver asked which school, MIT or Harvard. When we said MIT, driver says, “Oh, the smart one” I had 3 different people refer to the MIT as the smart school in Cambridge as opposed to famous one up the road. Even at convocation, the school President make a little dig at the other school in Cambridge. It’s ok, they refer to MIT as the trade school down the road.
#7 “When I went there IHTFP was the motto.”
The flip side of your use of IHTFP is “I have truly found paradise”. I understand that many at MIT find this meaning equally valid.