Massachusetts Institute of Technology Top Questions

A look at the Career Office bulletin board.

You can do anything here. That's what I love about this place. If you can handle 10 classes, you can do it (no increased tuition). You wanna be involved in clubs, you can do that. You don't see a club you're looking for? You can start your own. The tradition, the cultures of the east side and the west side, it's all something very special. ILTFP.

MIT is the most amazing experience I've had in my entire life!

This survey can turn out to be kinda long.

MIT is a lot of work but you can have fun if you want to have it. You are responsible for your college experience is what it comes down too.

People always told me that the knowledge was made here, but I didn't realize it until I got here. And now that I'm here, I can't believe some of the things that go on around me.

Don't apply to MIT unless you love math and science and engineering. It doesn't matter that MIT is ranked in the top 10 or 5 or whatever it is now in USNWR. It matters that you get the best possible education for you--and someone put off by the number of math and science requirements should not be applying to MIT. If you want a broad, Ivory Tower liberal arts education, try the little school up-chuck. If you want to be around some of the best minds in the country and want to analytically look at the problems in today's world (yes, engineering problems but social problems as well), this may be the place for you. MIT is idiosyncratic, so visit before you decide.

IAP- the Independent Activities Period, happens every January and during this month regular classes are not held. Instead, this is the time when students can do cool things like make a cool project, participate in a less academically rigorous class, study even more intensely than usual in order to complete an academically rigorous class, do some research with a professor, or just hang out. The dorms do not close. You are not forced out during Spring Break or Winter Break or IAP. For an additional housing fee you can stay over the summer. There are early returns if you need to be back before term and rush actually start.

I love this place, but you have to really love a challenge, and enjoy an intense, nerdy atmosphere, to survive. It's really not a matter of absolute intelligence, or ability to pass a certain test; it's about wanting to learn, getting up in the middle of the night to look up some fact that's been nagging you, seeing--and saying out loud--the physics flaws in a fast food commercial, and knowing somewhere deep down that no matter how much a particular problem set tortures you or the tests seem impossible, it's the course or the topic that you hate, not the learning itself.

I love MIT. It gets very difficult at times, and some rather sharp words may leave my mouth at times when I am up at 4AM doing a p-set, but I am glad I made the decision to go here.