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Academics

First, a general overview. MIT is divided into five schools: Architecture; Engineering; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; Management; and Science. Within those schools there are twenty-two academic departments (such as Brain and Cognitive Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics). Most departments offer several majors, all of which are variations on a theme. Students aren鈥檛 expected to declare a major until the end of their freshman year, so you don鈥檛 need to apply to a particular school or department as an undergraduate; when you鈥檙e admitted to MIT, you鈥檙e admitted to all of MIT. Here鈥檚 one student鈥檚 perspective on the importance of this:

This lack of bureaucracy pervades MIT鈥檚 entire approach to education. With the exception of a few humanities courses, students never have to deal with being lotteried out of oversubscribed classes. You can add a class as late as five weeks into the term and drop a class as late as five weeks before the end of the term. After freshman year, there are no limits on the number of classes you can take per term or the number of majors you can declare, as long as your advisor approves the decision (which is a rubber-stamp process for students who are performing well). Many students double major. Undergraduates can also register for graduate-level classes, which offer a very different type of educational experience: most graduate courses meet in a small room with very few students and one professor. The topics in these courses are usually closely related to the professor鈥檚 current area of research, and the class feels more like a discussion than a lecture.

It didn鈥檛 really occur to me that the lack of administrative hassle would turn out to be such a vital thing. I switched majors twice: from architecture to biology and from biology to chemistry, and each time all I needed to do was get a signature from my advisor. I was horrified to hear stories from friends at other colleges who needed to write a long petition to switch majors, or go through a mini-admissions process to get into another department. If I had been asked to choose a major straight out of high school, it would have been a random choice, at best.

Classes

As for the undergraduate classes, there鈥檚 a lot of variation in the presentation format. Most of the freshman science core courses consist of three lectures and two recitation sections per week. Lectures for these courses have between 200 and 300 students, but recitations are limited to about twenty students per instructor, giving a lot of opportunity for individualized instruction. Departments also offer variants on the basic core courses, so while the standard freshman calculus class has the format described above, the theoretical version of freshman calculus has far fewer students in its lectures. In addition to the other flavors of the science core classes, MIT has different versions of the freshman year program itself. Concourse, the Experimental Studies Group (ESG), the Terrascope Program, and the Media Arts and Sciences (MAS) Freshman Program, all offer alternative, innovative approaches to teaching the freshman curriculum. These programs are limited in size (between twenty-four and sixty students in each) and are first-come, first-served, so if you鈥檙e interested in learning more about them, do your research before showing up on campus.

Credit

The institute gives Advanced Placement credit for some classes if you score well enough on your AP exams, and in many cases will accept transfer credit from another college. Advanced standing exams are also offered by MIT, and if you pass them you receive credit. More than three-quarters of MIT鈥檚 enrolling freshmen receive some sort of advanced credit, but no matter how much credit you have, MIT does not offer sophomore standing to firstterm freshmen (although second-term sophomore standing is offered in the second term).

Grading

There is a limit on the number of classes freshmen can take and there is one other major difference between the first term of the freshman year and the remainder of the MIT undergraduate experience: Pass/No Record. This refers to the grading system used for freshmen. If you earn an A, B, or C in a course, it appears as a P on your transcript. Ds and Fs do not appear on the external transcript at all鈥攊t will simply look as though you had never even registered for the course. There are three reasons why MIT has this system of grading: to level the playing field for students from different high school backgrounds; to get students acclimated to the MIT way of thinking and problem solving; and to allow students to explore a little (academically or otherwise) without fear of receiving a bad grade.

Many prospective students want to know if the freshman year is difficult. 鈥淒ifferent鈥� would be a better word. Generally speaking, if you鈥檙e bright enough to be admitted to MIT, you鈥檙e more than bright enough to handle the material. For students with advanced high school preparation, most of the core classes will feel like accelerated versions of the material in high school with slightly more complicated homework, longer tests, and some interesting stories thrown into the lecture. If you鈥檙e truly bored with the standard fare, try one of the theoretical versions of calculus or physics; even the brightest, most academically prepared students find these courses to be quite challenging.

Seeking Help

Students with less rigorous background training might have more of a shock; if you鈥檝e never seen a vector before, freshman physics might appear somewhat alien to you at first. Here鈥檚 a hint: If you don鈥檛 understand something after fifteen minutes, ask someone. More often than not, it will take a knowledgeable person five minutes to explain something that could take you hours to extract from a book. MIT does offer one-on-one tutors for the science core classes, but it鈥檚 usually easier to grab the first available upperclassman for help. In fact, upperclassmen often look for freshmen working on problem sets. That may sound bizarre, but there are a few reasons for this apparent selflessness:

• All upperclassmen have taken the core courses, so they are familiar with the material.
• There鈥檚 no freshman dormitory, so upperclassmen and freshmen occupy the same living space.
• Realistically, all MIT students are a touch egotistical at heart; they enjoy being able to demonstrate their knowledge.

So even though they鈥檙e not necessarily altruists, the upperclassmen are a fantastic resource for the freshman class.

After freshman year, it鈥檚 difficult to make sweeping claims about academic life. What people choose as a major drastically affects their experience. Generally speaking, the classes become much smaller and more specialized. Engineering courses, design courses, and laboratory courses will be very different from anything you鈥檙e likely to have seen in high school. They鈥檒l be more time consuming as well (some classes are notorious for this). One student had the following comment:

I had never touched a computer before coming to MIT, so the first time I took a programming class, I had a lot to learn: how to use a text editor, how to move files around鈥攕ome really basic stuff. Many of the other students in the class had been programming for years, which was sort of intimidating, and on the first problem set, I spent all night (from 5:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M.) in front of a computer and accomplished literally nothing. I was going to drop the class, but a friend offered to come in and show me the essentials, so I took her up on the offer. We spent about four hours working, and it was enough to give me an overview of what I needed to do. I stayed with the course, and ended up earning an A in it. Looking back, it鈥檚 hard for me to imagine why I thought it was so complicated at first, but I guess that鈥檚 because I actually learned something.

Engineering Contest and Other Projects

Some MIT courses are so different, they鈥檙e famous. One of the mechanical engineering design classes requires students to build a small robot, which they ultimately operate against other robots in a huge contest. This is a cult experience at MIT; many of the people who take the class are not even mechanical engineering majors! The contest itself is held in a large lecture hall in front of a packed audience, and it鈥檚 televised for the viewers at home. There鈥檚 an electrical engineering version of the same contest in which the robots must be equipped with an automatic controller. For one of the architecture design courses, students develop visual projects that they display publicly. So, for a few weeks during the term, sandboxes, statues, performance artists, and thought-provoking signs can be found everywhere on campus.

Nonengineering Classes

MIT is often thought of as primarily a science and engineering school, but in reality it鈥檚 more of an analytical thinking school. MIT鈥檚 economics, management, political science, and philosophy programs are all top-notch. In particular, economics and management are always ranked as one of the top three programs in the country. For some reason, math and music go hand-in-hand, so the music department is phenomenal; moreover, MIT students can cross-register for classes at both Harvard and Wellesley, so if you鈥檙e really dying to take a course in Sanskrit, that鈥檚 not an adequate reason to avoid MIT. h3. IAP/UROP

There are two other very unique elements to MIT academics: the Independent Activities Period (IAP) and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). IAP takes place during January, and it鈥檚 like a miniature, optional, month-long term. Students can decide for themselves whether they want to be at MIT for those four weeks, but the vast majority of students stay. Some students choose to do a wide variety of one-day seminars and projects, some students take classes (often for credit), and others work. Here鈥檚 a small sampling of the noncredit activities offered during IAP: the 19th Annual Paper Airplane Contest, Basic Darkroom Techniques, Blackjack 101, Computers and the Human Genome Project, Hebrew Reading Literacy in Eight Hours, Intro to British Politics, Practical NMR Spectroscopy. For-credit classes included: Intro to Special Relativity, Special Problems in Architecture, IAP Japan Workshop (which included a three-week stay in Japan), Intro to Neuroanatomy, Experiencing Health Policy: A Week in D.C., Foreign Currency Exchange, Intensive German. There are hundreds of course offerings during IAP; for a complete listing of last year鈥檚 activities as well as detailed descriptions of the events, check out web.mit.edu/iap.

The majority of students who work during IAP will probably do so through UROP, which is quite arguably one of the best things about MIT. In this program, undergraduate students work on a research project at MIT. UROP isn鈥檛 limited to a select few, nor are the projects watered-down pedagogical tools. More than eighty percent of all students choose to get a UROP at some point in their undergraduate careers. The projects themselves are ongoing research efforts, so undergraduates work together with professors, graduate students, and 鈥減ostdocs.鈥�

With a little motivation, undergraduates can even coauthor research papers with the group, and there鈥檚 no better way to cultivate a good faculty reference for later use. UROP enables students to interact with professors as colleagues, not just teachers; it also gives undergraduates an excellent sense for what graduate studies in a particular field would be like. On top of all this, students actually get paid for their work in UROP so they don鈥檛 have to choose between meeting financial need and doing undergraduate research. For a listing of current UROP openings and their descriptions, look at web.mit.edu/urop.

The summer after my freshman year, I got a UROP with the Communications Biophysics Group working on a speech aid for deaf-blind people. We built a device that decomposed sound waves into different spectral regions, and then mapped each region to one of twelve buzzers. When you strapped the device on your forearm, you were able to 鈥榝eel鈥� people talking. The engineering was cool, but working with the deaf-blind test subjects was probably the most interesting part. They had been deaf and blind since birth, yet could speak pretty well and were able to 鈥榟ear鈥� me talk by placing their hand across my face. Listening to their perceptions of the world was absolutely fascinating.