Zap... you have been transported to MIT
Written: Apr 17 '01 (Updated Jul 22 '01)
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Pros: Unparalleled in academic excellence. Home of the most amazing students in the world.
Cons: Not for weak of heart. You will work...Hard.
The Bottom Line: If you are accepted at MIT, you are capable of handling it. If you can handle it, MIT is the only place to be. Period.
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| benho's Full Review: Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
As a tour guide at MIT for the last two years of time there as an undergraduate, I could go on and on about the pros and cons of attending, about the concerns people typically expressed, etc... That will take me forever, and this is not the best forum, though feel free to e-mail me if you want to hear more. Instead I will give you the short of it.
Bottom Line
If you are accepted at MIT, you are capable of handling it. If you can handle it, MIT is where you want to be.
Why?
(Imagine you are standing in a imposing Neoclassical building, complete with imposing concrete columns. Inscribed, you see the names of great scientists. You enter through a creaky automatic door [the direct descendent of the oldest automatic door in the world], into a tall spacious well-worn Lobby, swarming with Earnest students all on the verge of exhaustion as they take a break to discuss philosophy or Quake or art or astrophysics over take-out Chinese, or they scurry to their next class.)
"Ahem. My name is Ben Ho, and welcome to MIT. You are standing in Lobby 7. If you look at the map I have just handed to you, you will see that all our buildings are identified by their number (the library is in building 10, the comp. sci. department in 34, economics is in building E51, Literature is in building 14). In fact, at MIT, long words tend to confuse us, so actually majors are also defined by number, so the previous statement should be "course 6 is in building 34, course 14 is in building E51, course 21 is in building 14." Don't worry you'll get used to it.
Anyway, as a connoisseur of college tours, I still recall when I was a senior in hs, that all these tours sound exactly the same. Also, many of you probably come to MIT with a lot of preconceived notions, (they're all nerds at MIT). sure.
Therefore, I have two goals today:
Two goals:
1) What makes us different?
2) What you might not know.
Student Life
"Let's start by crossing the street to where the students live. MIT's campus is self contained but you can see Boston across from the river that borders us. We're within walking distance to the hottest student town in the world, a quarter million students here, access to museums, arts, shopping, food. Also, on this side of the river, harvard square is just two miles away, with great poetry shops, cute cafes, and a university nobody cares about.
Over on the river, those sail boats are part of our sailing team. MIT pioneered sailing as a collegiate sport. MIT in fact is a big supporter of athletics. With 41 varsity sports ranging from baseball and football, to equestrian, fencing, and crew, we are tied with that unnamed university up the street, for having the most sports in the country. In fact, our pistol team was the number one civilian team in the country last year, and we even beat coast guard. Admittedly army and navy beat us, but I am perfectly fine with that.
This funny shaped dome we are now in front of is Kresge auditorium, designed by famed architect aero saarinen. MIT students are heavily involved in music, 1/3 participate in our orchestras, plays, musicals, etc. including a cappella groups like the chorallaries or the logarhythms.
Here are most of the dormitories on campus. Housed there are some of the smartest students in the world. Students are given freedom to live where they want, but most live in the same place for 4 years (this is unique to MIT), living with classmates of all ages, and forming a tightly knit community, a home, where you will eagerly find those willing to discuss not only the college standards like 80's cartoon series and the meaning of life at 4am, but also the feasibility of building a gravity powered train from new york to paris, or the philosophical implications of the vector function of the universe.
Hacks (otherwise known as practical jokes, pranks) are important here as well. When Good will Hunting won an Oscar (this being the movie about the supposed math genius janitor at MIT with Matt Damon, [side note: those questions on the black board were actually quite easy, and would be sample problems in any introductory discrete math class]), anyway, when good will hunting won the oscar, MIT students illuminated a 20 story picture of an oscar in the windows of one of our buildings. Of course, the ultimate dream is to one day play Tetris down said building.
Also, diversity is amazing here. We are 50% minority, not only the expected 30+% Asian, but also nearly 20% black and Hispanic as well.
Academics
"Back to the academic half of campus, here we are unrivaled. Not only in the expected fields like computer science and engineering and physics and math, but also in economics, linguistics, and architecture. Many of the buildings you see here were designed by I.M. Pei (builder of the new Louvre, the National Gallery of Art addition, and Rock and Roll hall of fame and MIT alum). Modern linguistics was invented by noam chomsky, as was modern economics by Paul Samuelson.
MIT is a pioneer, not just in science, (yes we invented Radar, yes Ground Zero was here since the guidance system on all nuclear bombs were originally built and calibrated here), but also in education. We pioneered Undergraduate Research (90% of students here work part time during some part of their student career for professors at high wages doing real research), we were the first school to do ROTC, we send students to foreign countries on summer and semester long internships, we are putting all our classes online free to everyone in the world.
At MIT we teach you to think. Nowhere in our computer science program do we teach you to program. There is no c++ class. We teach you to think about programming. Once you can do that, the programming is easy.
And you will work here at MIT. This is not one of those pansy Ivy schools where you the average grade is an A-, and you can't fail. There is an old saw, at MIT, you are given the following choice "Get good grades, Have a Social Life, Sleep: Pick Any Two" You will work, but you will learn.
The education you receive here gives you the tools to succeed in the modern world. We are not all geeks and nerds. We are not all tech people. We are problem solvers, able to approach any problem in the world and handle it. Any problem
The ability to reason and adapt, you solve whatever problem is thrown at you. That is the MIT education."
Incidentally, I was a damned good tour guide. Keeping a crowd of up to 100 entertained for a 2 hour walking tour is tough.
NOTES
If you are already an MIT Student, here is a survival guide:
http://benho.epinions.com/content_1417060484
If you are an undergradute and considering graduate schools, see this link ASAP!:
http://benho.epinions.com/content_1336254596
Recommended:
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Epinions.com ID:
benho
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Member: Ben Ho
Location: New York, NY, USA
Reviews written: 65
Trusted by: 52 members
About Me:
The end (of grad school) is near... off now to teach in cold Ithaca.
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