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@Sakky: While your arguments would be valid for most universities, schools like MIT and Caltech are specifically geared to accelerate the smartest students. MIT is not designed to serve the lowest common denominator. Instead, the institute is designed to make it possible for the smartest people to race ahead at an unimaginable rate.
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Uh, yet at the end of the day, a significant percentage of MIT and (especially) Caltech students, relative to other top schools, do poorly. Heck, my brother, a Caltech alum, knew a few who actually flunked out. They were indeed - as you say - some of the smartest students in high school. But they did poorly at Caltech, poorly enough to not be able to graduate.
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Now of course, supporting infrastructure has been developed to help students, because sometimes people slip and fall. But consistantly failing all of your courses?
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You don't have to fail
all your courses. You just have to fail enough of them to land on academic probation, and from there, it's a short ride to expulsion.
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I do not think people considering Sloan should go to Sloan because they can't handle the difficulty of other subjects. They should be going to Sloan because they want to study buisness/management. You're making it sound like Sloan is a school of dumb people who failed out of course 6/8/18/etc. This is definetely not the case
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The ideal is obviously that you study what you like and do well in it. But there is a big difference between the ideal and reality. As I said above, some MIT students do poorly. For them, Sloan is a highly useful safety net, as it's a lot better for them to switch to Sloan than to not even graduate at all.
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IMO, MIT is not designed for people who are on the borderline of failing out. These are rare cases, and these people have to make tough decisions. But ultimately the institute is filled by people who are indeed succeeding and going on to graduate in their desired fields. And anyone coming to MIT or Caltech should know ahead of time that they are taking a risk
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Actually, I think now you're starting to agree with me. You said it yourself - sometimes you have to make tough decisions.
But I said it before, and I don't think anybody would dispute, there are some people at MIT who are doing poorly. Surely anybody who's been at MIT have seen people try out the most rigorous majors (i.e. course VI) and don't do well. It's what they like, it's what they wanted to do, but then they come to MIT and find out that it's just too hard for them. In that case, they may have to make the 'tough decision' to choose an easier major. Like Sloan.
Look, by no means am I trying to single out MIT in this respect. The truth is, this sort of 'arbitrage of majors' happens at most other engineering schools. For example, I know a
lot of students at Berkeley who started off in EECS or Chemical Engineering and then ended up switching to something much easier. I think Alexandre (or maybe it was somebody else) discussed how many students at Michigan started off in engineering but then did poorly and hence switched to one of the easier humanities or soc-sci majors. It is simply the nature of most engineering schools - including MIT and Caltech - that some students will end up doing poorly. In fact, the curve almost guarantees that it be so.
Again, to reiterate, the presence of Sloan is therefore a
great thing because it serves as a safety valve for those students who do poorly in other majors. That's not bad -
it's good. At least those students can still graduate. That's a heck of a lot better than flunking them out entirely.
Look, it would be ideal if MIT (and Caltech) were to admit only those students who are going to do well in their intended major. In fact, ultimately, that's what I think
all schools should do. But, like it or not, that doesn't happen. Whether we like it or not, some students who come in intending to be engineers at MIT (or Caltech or Berkeley or Michigan, etc.) end up doing poorly in engineering. Hence, the question then is what happens to these students? I would argue that giving the opportunity to switch to an easier major from which they can successfully graduate is the right thing to do. {Note, if they still insist on pursuing their desired major, they are free to try to transfer to another school. But at least they have the option to stay at their current school and still graduate, even if it's not in the major that they originally wanted.}