ask-paul

Difficult, yes, of course. I imagine the push towards double majors, rather than double degrees, is to make double majoring more useful. It does downgrade the "OMG, you DOUBLE MAJORED!?" factor, and I'm personally not entirely sure of whether this is a good choice. I wish I had been able to attend the faculty meeting so I could have listened to the debate and better understand their reasoning...

kryptonsa36

Still, in most cases, that would indicate anything but genius.

Olo

I know someone taking in excess of 170 hours this term. And doing well in all of them. :/. They exist, for sure...

iostream

probably better to lower the requirements

being interdisciplinary is good

taking lots of courses is cool if you're actually interested in those courses and if they're good classes and if you can actually handle it

the problem is that a lot of people don't bother to think about those provisos

not all work is useful work

CalAlum

I'm currently teaching a grad course at a top-tier university, and in my opinion, most/many of the students who sign up for 8 or 9 courses (regardless of their major) rarely attend the lectures or discussions and attempt to pass simply by taking the exams or submitting the papers. I teach a small-group seminar in which I often meet such students the 4th or 5th week; they've done none of the reading and can't intellectually analyze any of the course concepts in light of the assigned texts. Yet somehow they believe they can knock out a paper at midterm and a paper at the end of the course and receive a passing grade. That strategy works when the professor lectures to a large audience and papers are graded by TAs. But in all the cases I've had, I've counseled such students to drop my seminar, because that strategy never works well. In fact, in the more than 20 years I've been teaching, I'd say that I have never met a student brilliant enough to receive a grade higher than a "C" using that approach. Now, you may be reading this thinking, "But MIT students would be MORE brilliant." Trust me -- the students where I teach are just as brilliant, and some of them selected to enroll at this institution over MIT.

Just my 2 cents.

CalAlum

P.S.
I should add that I teach in a humanities field.

CalAlum

I think the one thing I dislike about MIT is the existence of a culture that places more value on the quantity of the courses taken than on the quality of the work. That culture isn't universal at MIT, but it's widespread enough to lead some students to believe that if they're only taking 4 or 5 courses a semester, they don't quite match up. Let me give an example of how this is simply ridiculous. I currently have one student trying to tackle an enormous courseload. He manages to fulfill the requirements, and it looks like he's on track to get a B in my seminar course. Big deal. I have another student taking only 4 courses, one of which is the small research seminar I'm teaching. But she has put about 10 times the effort into her project, and has undertaken some original research that is worthy of presentation at a regional or national conference. I'm already planning ways to make sure she gets that opportunity. Now, let me ask you: Which one is the "genius"?

differential

The problem CalAlum is that this guy is a genius takes 8-9 classes and systematically get's A's and A+'s in all of them. This is a spectacular feat: getting 8-9 A's/A+'s in a semester at MIT is no easy feat (hell most people have trouble doing this w/ 4/5 classes!). And this is not based on a subjectivish grading from a professors. These are cold hard results from engineering class exams.

We aren't talking about the average or even a small subset of MIT. We are talking about a hand few of individuals who are really damn smart and have proven they can do this.

Now you could argue that this student isn't taking in the material? Maybe... maybe not. He seems to have a better understanding of it all compared to his peers often.

Of course it's a *BAD* thing (TM) to plan and compare oneself to these types of individuals, since they are the exception rather than the norm. But it's also important at MIT to acknowledge that yes, there exist these types of people who can regularly accomplish what you would deem humanly impossible.

rainynightstarz

I looked at some of the requirements for different majors... for the less pursued double majors combos isn't it the lack of overlapping requirements that keep people from double majoring than the 270 beyond GIR?
It seems to me that for many combos of double major, you fulfill the 270 beyond GIR way before you finish all the required classes.
If that is it case, double majoring for certain combos is still as hard, and you don't get the benefit of having 2 degrees (one on each hand XP).
Maybe they should have double major/one diploma for those with less than 270 beyond GIR and 2 diplomas for those with more than 270 beyond GIR for kicks.

ask-paul

Due to my involvement in student government, I have heard more than a little bit about this dual major thing. What you just suggested is indeed one idea that I've heard tossed around, although I don't know how much support it actually has or will have...for two reasons: one, it creates kind of a stigma between people with "two degrees" as opposed to "just two majors" and two, part of the reason for the change is that some people feel that the GIRs + 270 units doesn't actually warrant two separate degrees in the first place.

gnrfan

Are the beasts who take 8-9 classes an ace them mostly imo/ipho types?