An MIT FAQ

An MIT FAQ Recently, in my wanderings around the internet (that is to say, the College Confidential message boards), Ive noticed an abundance of ridiculous stereotypes about MIT and MIT students. Im a little touchy about things like this, but my boyfriend is trying to make me into a better person and keeps telling me to find the good. I decided to find the good in blatant stereotyping by creating this FAQ. Q. Are all MIT students typical nerds? A. Definitely not. Many of us are very atypical nerds. Q. No, seriously. I bet you all go to Star Trek conventions all the time. Do you know how to talk about anything but science? A. Well, most of us dont. But so what if we did? There are worse things to be. But anyway, MIT is host to a wide variety of versions of campus life from the typical (intramural sports) to the only at MIT (hacks). Check out our list of student groups. Were a collection of 4000 unique people with abnormal interests, and were proud of to be a little offbeat. Around here, nerd isnt an epithet. Q. (related to previous) Do you spend all your time studying? A. If we spent all our time studying, how would we have time to be in all those student groups? Q. MIT has sports teams? A. Um, yeah. MIT has 41 varsity sports teams (tied with some school up the street, Ive heard, for the most in the nation) and 35 club sports teams, plus a thriving intramural sports and physical education program. Q. Doesnt MIT have a really high suicide rate? A. Statistically speaking (which is really the only way one can speak about this sort of thing), no. The MIT student suicide rate is consistent with the national average for 18 to 22-year-olds any analysis which suggests otherwise fails to properly account for the extremely small sample size. Q. I dont need good extracurriculars to apply to MIT MIT only admits people with perfect test scores, right? A. Actually, youd be better off applying with decent test scores and stellar extracurriculars than with perfect test scores and mediocre extracurriculars. MIT likes to admit people, not cardboard cutouts. Q. I heard MIT is super-competitive and cutthroat. A. Actually, MIT is a very collaborative place, and its normal (and expected) that students will work together in groups to complete their problem sets. MIT is hard for everyone, and the difficulty inspires a great deal of cameraderie among students. Were all here in the trenches together Q. If I apply to MIT and tell them Im going to be a humanities major, wont it be easier for me to get in? A. Nope. Wouldnt that be a little too easy? The major you write down on your application might help the admissions committee understand why youre applying to MIT, but they wont admit you just because they want to admit a music major this year. Q. Im not a super-genius. Can I still survive at MIT? A. With the grueling coursework every MIT student has to complete, its often better to be hard-working than brilliant. Being brilliant helps, Im sure, but passion and motivation are the real necessities. Q. Isnt MITs campus really ugly? A. Ive heard this one a lot, and I still dont understand it. I mean, MIT has an urban campus, so we dont have the plethora of quads typical of the more suburban campuses, but I still think Killian Court is beautiful. Who cares if a campus is beautiful anyway? Last time I checked, college was about learning, not foliage. Q. You guys are all nerds. A. Thank you.