Freshman FAQs

Freshman FAQs Hey there!  Havent seen you in a while.  And by seen I mean you havent seen the pixels on your screen that would indicate that you are reading an MIT Admissions blog post by Michael C. 16. Anyway. Around a week ago, one of the admins on the MIT Class of 2017 Facebook page asked me to do a Reddit-style AMA (Ask Me Anything) post.  I wasnt able to do one at the time, since I was dangling off a cliff in Utah and had limited Internet access: (trust me, the lack of reliable wifi was by far the scarier part) But here I am now, answering some of the questions that Ive gotten via email/FB message/owl post in the past few months. 1. Why did you pick MIT over the bajillion other colleges out there? Whenever someone asks me about this I always remember Connies post from way back when about fit.  Like many MIT people, in high school I was always known as the smart one or the guy whos good at biology or whatever.  And while thats nice for the ego, its not so helpful in terms of intellectual stimulation. I didnt want college to be just a continuation of high school, where I could put some marginal effort into classes and get good grades but never really had to challenge myself. I wanted to throw myself into an environment where Id be surrounded by people just as smart as, and in many cases much smarter than, myself. None of what Ive written above pertains only to MIT, of course. Youll find people much smarter than yourself at any top university. What tipped the balance towards MIT for me was the culture. I didnt realize this until I started visiting colleges, but culture is really a tangible thing that you can compare. So much of MIT is about openness, whether its the open source movement or OCW or edX or hacking and I really liked that. In the op-ed A love letter to MIT, there was a paragraph that talked about doors, which really resonated with me: You made yourself an open playground. Literally, your buildings are always open. You can easily find an open classroom for students and friends to gather to brainstorm startup ideas. This is quite different from Harvard where even if you are a student, you are often met with locked doors. Ive found that to be very true; at MIT, pretty much every building is open 24/7 to students (and if a doors locked, there are ways around that…but thats another topic).  It sounds silly, but I feel it does make a difference in terms of culture and accessibility. 2. How hard IS MIT? And how is the workload/party/chill balance like? MIT can be any level of difficulty you like, as long as that level of difficulty is hard. Yeah, MIT classes by themselves are pretty hard.  But classes are only such a small part of life here.  You can increase the difficulty as much as you want by adding UROPs, extra classes, clubs, etc.  It all becomes a game of time management.  For example, I was a perfectionist about things in high school (I harboured this dream that I would ace every test in AP Calc BC, and was kind of let down when I got a 98 on my third test) and I have a feeling that some of you are like that too.  But trust me when I say that youll get over the perfectionist thing not necessarily because youre not capable of acing tests, but because youll realize that for the first time that time really is your most limited resource. Time. is. everything.  How you allocate it will be one of the biggest factors influencing your experience here at MIT.  Its not simply a case of studying vs. socializing anymore.  Now, its studying for the massive midterm tomorrow vs UROPing vs networking with ethanol (aka partying) vs prototyping new designs for Toy Product Design vs sleeping vs hacking….  Whenever I consider joining a new activity, I think of it almost in terms of credits (one credit roughly corresponds to one hour per week).  Im currently taking five classes and a UROP, which is the rough hour/week equivalent of 67 credits.  Thats a hefty load in itself, which is why Im careful when adding new activities like UAV team or yearbook or blogging or whatever. But honestly, dont worry too much about the workload.  Not yet, at least.  Pass/No Record first semester is a godsend for helping people acclimate to MITs academic environment. Also, a word of advice from the not-so-elderly: Id strongly recommend against spending too much time gaming or Facebooking or Tumblring (Ill have to admit that I have trouble with those last two).  Youre spending $55K a year to be here.  Dont waste it doing activities you could do in your parents basement. 3. UROPs.  UROPs UROPs UROPs MITs Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program is one of the major things separating it from other elite schools.  If youve got the will, its comparatively easy to get a research position in whatever field youre interested in.  I actually didnt realize how unique the UROP program was until I started talking to my friends at Ivies like Harvard and Yale, where its much more difficult (and in some departments, nigh impossible) to get a research position in your first year. But how do you get a UROP?  A good first step is to look at the UROP openings website, just to get a sense of what opportunities are out there and what various labs are doing.  But applying to these advertised openings isnt the most optimal way to get a UROP, because these are the hardest positions to get.  If a lab is advertising an opening, theyre usually expecting applicants with more substantial experience. A better way to get a UROP is to find labs whose work youre interested in, and then directly contact the lab.  For example, I got my current UROP (in Langer Lab at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research) by emailing Langer Labs administrator with my resume and interests; she then forwarded my email to all of the postdocs in Langer Lab.  Postdocs who were interested and had openings then emailed me back, setting up casual interviews.  Once youve found a postdoc willing to take you on, then you apply officially through the UROP website. 4. Im not sure what I want to major in.  Is that okay? Yes!  One of the best things about MIT is that you dont have to declare a major until the end of your second semester.  I came into MIT pretty sure that I would be majoring in something bio Course 6-7, or 7, or 20, or maybe 10.  And the best way to know if youre interested in a field is simply to get experience in it; through UROPs, clubs, project-based classes, etc.  Through my UROP and Toy Product Design, I realized that I was interested in less of the wet lab stuff, and more of the applied engineering stuff.  Or to quote my friend Connie, who actually did an AMA: Im really results-driven and having a concrete goal like make this device, rather than cure cancer is a lot easier for me to work towards and agrees with my working style a lot better. (still not sure if results-driven is a euphemism for impatient, but hey, it describes me.  I think) I like building neat stuff.  Im Course 2 now, and I still might integrate some of my love for bio through 2A-20 building medical devices or something.  Well see. Thats it for this post!  For absolutely no reason, heres some photos of food Ive cooked recently in the lovely Senior Haus kitchens, because I like pretty pictures of food and still harbour a secret desire to be a food blogger: Also, feel free to ask any more questions youve got in the comments!