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Many of the students who post on this board are bloggers, or bloggers-wanna-bes, and are, literally and metaphorically, MIT cheerleaders, so I think it's good to get some "balance" -- to see another perspective.
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I am *so tired* of this idea that I'm not credible because I was a blogger. MIT doesn't own me, and trust me, there's plenty I can and do complain about (you should have heard me at meetings with administrators). Who was the first one to post to the "what do you dislike about MIT" thread?
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The idea that a low GPA from MIT will be viewed more highly than an excellent GPA from State U, is simply delusional (and a tad arrogant)
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Low vs. excellent, maybe not. But I can cite you a source saying that grads of top programs will be viewed the same with a lower GPA than grads from run-of-the-mill programs.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf (page 8)
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But compare MIT dorms with those of many other so-called "top tier" universities....
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MIT students *love* their housing system. We don't want *nice* dorms (and for the minority who do, they can pick one of the dorms that meets that spec). We want *communities*, that we built ourselves and that we care about. We want living conditions in which we are emotionally comfortable. Suggest "nicer" dorms, and people start wondering what you plan to do with their beloved current ones. Suggest renovating the dorms that already exist, and people might be happy, or not, depending on how much it will disrupt their lives and ruin their murals. Suggest destroying our communities (by something like randomized housing) and we will fight you tooth and nail. We're not complacent, we just have different priorities than you apparently do.
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What about those students who are further down the MIT ladder? What about Mr./Ms. Average-MIT? Obviously they are smart, obviously they would do well at an institution where the competition isn't quite so searing. Are they in any way "protected?" Or do they loose out in the academic re-shuffle after graduation?
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Well, in GPA terms, I was pretty far down (not going to put the number here, but trust me, it's well below the MIT average). I got a great job that I love and that is intellectually challenging when I graduated, and go to grad school part-time. My life's been rerouted some, sure - thank you MIT for actually making me consider what I wanted and didn't want to do with my life instead of breezing complacently through it - but I don't think it's been made worse. Actually I think it's been made a lot better by the challenges that I've faced.
In any case, I knew what I was getting into when I came (or should have), and so does every student who matriculates. I will fight if I am actually being screwed, and I will of course grouse with my friends when I am frustrated like everyone does, but why should I be angry or bitter about a level of challenge that I took on voluntarily? MIT culture is all about the freedom to make your own choices...and to take responsibility for them.
There are certainly some terrible teachers at MIT, and I *have* complained about some of these people in the past, and I will warn current students away from taking classes with them. Along the same lines, I will promote the great teachers (and I definitely had those as well), as will most other students. I sat on the faculty/student committee that picks professors for MIT's highest teaching award one year, and it was great to see the glowing letters of recommendation that students wrote, unprompted, for the nominees.
There are good teachers and bad teachers, but you are going to get that everywhere, even at teaching colleges. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't push for better teaching (and there are many who do so), but you also have to acknowledge reality. Which is not the same as being complacent. It's a student group, after all (UA SCEP) that monitors professors for violations of the faculty rules on how to treat students in class, and deals (usually successfully) with the complaints as they come (and having been on their mailing list, I can assure you that students are not complacent when it comes to being willing to send complaints).
On the other hand, I just don't care if my profs give reading assignments, unless I'm in a seminar. I have the textbooks, the Internet, and a perfectly good pair of eyes. I can find the appropriate readings with minimal effort.
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I guess I'm still too much of a '60's kid
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Yeah, and I'm a crazy bleeding-heart civil libertarian activist (first worked with the ACLU in high school, in a state and time where it was considered subversive and dangerous), and a long-time MIT student activist who spent three years fighting on behalf of students on all sorts of things, riling them up and shoving the administration's flaws in its face. I'm a candidate for MIT's board of trustees, the Corporation.
Yet you come on here and tell me that I'm complacent and unassertive because my priorities and viewpoints aren't the same as yours, and because I love MIT fiercely for what it is, no matter how much I have also hated it at times. And you imply that I'm not credible, that I'm a "cheerleader", because I was a blogger (and how did I become a blogger in the first place? I became friends with Matt McGann because he was a former student activist himself and I went to him for advice on how to put up a better fight, and he recommended me as a blogger to Ben). You can do a reasonable critique of MIT without insulting us.