MIT: The Big Picture
MIT just was the perfect school for me. It was a great size - a class size that offered a lot of activities and club but at the same time wasn't so large that I felt lost in the crowd. The people are amazing, the academics are awesome, and you can do pretty much whatever you want outside it - from saving the world to learning to juggle. The surrounding area is gorgeous, too. Boston's a great city. So much history, so much to see, so much diversity, and it's amazing to have it right in our back yard, a 10 minute walk from my dorm. I love how unusual we are, from our numbering system (buildings, classes, and majors are referred to by number) from our unique lingo (tool/punt/hack/IHTFP/etc). It's just a great place to be with plenty of opportunity to do whatever you want - and everyone can find their place here.
MIT Academic Life
Freshman classes tend to be largest since everyone's required to take certain intro classes, and from there classes shrink. The nice thing is that the professors are only an email away. They're all required to have office hours, so you can see them in person. They're usually willing to talk before or after class, too. If you put in a tiny bit of effort, you'll be fine communicating with profs. Students are always having intelligent conversations, though not necessarily about a class because people read stuff about all sorts of topics and have tons to share. The nice thing is that since we don't have any class rank or graduation honors, competitive people are only competing against themselves, seeing how much they can push themselves. I haven't experienced any backstabbing nature like at other schools - everyone collaborates because that's what you have to do to survive. It's tough here because any given class will make you go more in-depth than you ever thought, so you'll learn tons just for the sake of learning, more than you'd probably need in a job. But in turn, you end up prepared for anything in the future.
MIT's Student Body
The students here are pretty unique. I have friends of different races, religions, orientations, etc, and it's awesome because I'm experiencing different cultures I've never met in my life. I don't see a lot of self-segregation along these lines. People are cool with each other and that's that. They come from everywhere - people on my hall come from near the Boston area to Kenya and Sweden, and that's a really neat experience. As far as political activism, some are, and some aren't. There's a place for you here if you are, but if that's not your thing you'll be fine too. I'd say people lean more liberal than conservative, but I've met some very conservative people too so that's not a sweeping statement.
MIT Student Activities + Social Life
I'm not certain what groups are more popular than others - people are into absolutely everything. I know people into musical theater, part of our movie screening club, medical lecture groups, etc. And as for the stereotype that we can't do sports, our pistol team has beat the army consistently over the past years. We're not physically unskilled (you're even required to take PE's here - I've taken pistol, archery, fencing, and sailing). Dorms have a lot of tradition, each unique to the dorm's personality. Some dorms drop pianos or monitors off roofs every year, others drop thousands of bouncy balls. We have "Bad Taste" every year, too, which is a show that is everything... in bad taste. People party often enough for me - my dorm usually has a party on one hall or another every weekend, and we're not the only ones. Frats and sororities are important to many people on campus, but you're not going to feel left out if you're not part of one.
MIT Naked Truth
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.
