frutiaspice

Hi, could those who applied to MIT tell me the reason why you chose MIT? Thanks!

molliebatmit

I chose MIT because when I came for my overnight visit, everyone I met was very intelligent, but also very friendly, welcoming, and non-judgmental. I was comfortable immediately in the environment.

I also knew I'd get much more personal attention and be allocated more resources at a smaller school like MIT rather than at my large state school, which was my other choice.

I wrote a blog entry about my college decision here.

frutiaspice

Thanks! That really helps!

tachobg

I had to choose between harvard and mit just a few months ago. while harvard is a great school, i just felt so much more energy and enthusiasm from the students at MIT.

I picked it because most people work incredibly hard and that's the type of environment I want to be in for the next 4 years.

It's also a smaller school and everybody was very welcoming during CPW (the admitted student weekend) and went out of their way to invite you into their dorm/frat/club/class and show you how great their school is. Also, I was going to print out all the activities planned for CPW (+descriptions) in size 12 font before I went....it was 80 something pages.

In comparison, Harvard did not have many activities planned. My hosts were really cool, but people and the atmosphere were generally not as welcoming as they were at MIT. I even got called a "(Haha it's past curfew you) stupid prefrosh (!)" but that can happen anywhere so i guess it's not really a reason, more of an impression.

iostream

i won an axline scholarship from caltech a few months ago (100% full ride merit scholarship all four years), and i turned it down to go to mit. i also got into stanford, brown, and random other places. no, i am not crazy.

i liked mit better than caltech because caltech seemed 1) way too small - it really bothered me that all the humanities offerings at caltech could fit on three pieces of paper, that i could see everything at caltech in about one hour, and that it wasn't much bigger than my high school - and 2) very "grinding" - people at caltech had a hell of a lot of work to do, and it was a source of a lot of complaining because people really didn't believe that all that work was really meaningful and educational. moreover, the core curriculum at caltech is restrictive and hard to get out of (as someone who's taken a lot of university-level math and science, this was a big negative), and for what i'm interested in (nanotechnology, bioengineering), mit seemed to have better programs and research opportunities. moreover, cross-registration with harvard was a big plus. access to math 55 is pretty amazing, and there are other humanities courses at harvard that i am drooling over.

as for fluffy subjective things: i liked the people at mit better. at caltech, when i told them that i was deciding between mit and caltech, they would rail on diffusely about how much mit sucked. at mit, when i told them i was considering caltech, many students tried to give an honest appraisal of the differences between the two. some people even recommended caltech over mit if i was looking for certain programs or a certain kind of college experience. also, i have many friends going to mit/boston. not so much in california. mit is also closer to home, which is nice. finally, and most vaguely, i felt that i just fit in more at mit than at caltech.

i am pretty convinced that all this stuff justifies turning down a full ride. if anyone else finds themselves in the same position, consider the following -- caltech itself reports that only 20% of the 24 people who get axlines take caltech up on the offer (the link is somewhere, can't find it right now) -- this is actually lower than the general yield of ~33%. i know five other axline recipients who are turning them down, four of whom are going to mit.

edit: i agree with the poster above me on many counts, too. CPW >> caltech's prefrosh weekend!

frutiaspice

Wow, thanks for the replies!

mootmom

iostream, thanks for that insight into a very carefully considered decision. I hope your time at MIT is all that you hope it will be.

Sklog_W

I didn't go to any CPW's, it really just hindged on what subject I majored in. Initially I thought pure math so I was leaning towards Princeton, but then I figured out that I pretty much hated math and physics since I had been doing them so long, so I chose to do chemical engineering, and MIT was the logical choice at that point.

frutiaspice

That makes sense...I'm interested in biology and I hear MIT has a pretty good biology program so I'm thinking about applying.

molliebatmit

Yup, it's one of the top three or four in the country.

MIT2011Dad

Stanford, MIT and UC Berkeley form the top three graduate programs in "Biological Sciences ".
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/gra.../bio_brief.php

scooby_hermione

I chose MIT ultimately because it was just a good fit, as vague as that sounds. I attended a summer program there - WTP - which was pretty much the deciding factor in all of my college decisions. I liked having Boston right at my feet, as oppose to being way out in the middle of nowhere. Boston's a pretty neat city; I like the way public transportation is pretty reliable and there are a lot of cool places to see there.

I didn't mind the MIT campus. My dad and brother think the place is ugly, but really, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? haha. I personally think it's kinda cool. In my humble opinion, the Stata Center is amazing-looking, even if the two afore-mentioned critics think it looks like a heap of scrap metal. =P It's not a liberal-arts school pretty, by any means, but it has character, I guess is the best way to describe it. An immediate example that jumps to mind is visiting 'The Tomb of the Unknown Tool,' this little alcove wayyy underground that supposedly some mysterious student used to work in. It's neat how almost all the buildings connect; at CPW, I played Underground Capture the Flag at midnight, and that wouldn't have been possible had the buildings not all connected up. heehee.

I also liked the people! Or the ones I've met thus far. Our TAs at WTP were MIT undergrad students, and our teachers were MIT PhD candidates. And yeah, they were really awesome. Fun, down-to-earth, friendly. My friends there, most of whom will be attending with me in the fall, were also really cool. They were different from my school-friends in that we'd always have fun staying up late - doing homework. Well, and a bit of talking and playing games and climbing the dorm walls. I'm not sure, efficiency-wise, how much more quickly we would've gotten hw done if we did it alone, but hey, it was way more fun working as a group, and there were definitely problems that we all had to put our heads together on. Occasionally, we still were unable to come up with a solution. Recursion with the Tower of Hanoi comes to mind.

One thing that struck me about MIT was how chaotic everything seemed! CPW was actually a pretty good example of this chaos. At CPW '07, there were like 600 + events going on over the span of 3 days. No possible way to make every single one; we just had to pick and choose. I guess to me, that represented how there's so much out there at MIT, but ultimately, the student has to choose what works. I think in this advertisement-booklet-thing MIT sent me, they wrote something like, "YOU WRITE THE CODE!" which makes sense. As I learned more about MIT, I began to realize that I wasn't keen on the idea of lecture halls during my freshmen year - my high school class size is 120, so all my classes are small - and then I learned about freshmen learning communities like ESG and Concourse, which have class sizes much more like my high school did. In other words, provided that you go looking, there are opportunities out there.

I hope this is helpful - bear in mind that I'll be starting as a freshmen this coming fall, so I haven't actually gone to school there...but nevertheless, I guess that more-or-less sums up why I chose MIT.

frutiaspice

thanks for sharing!