prime235

Does anyone know which major more time-consuming/difficult--Economics or Brain and Cognitive Science?

oasis

Why do you need to decide on a major? You won't declare it till second year and you'll spend most of your time taking GIRs anyway between now till IAP.

But to answer your question, I feel like econ at MIT is very "mathy." Econ at a lot of other colleges focus on trend-seeing, essay-writing, but MIT econ is more analytical and mathematical (you should make sure that you are not afraid of math if you major in econ). Unofficially, course 14 also has some really bad instruction in the introductory classes, which also discourages many potential students from pursuing the degree further (point: be prepared to self-study at certain times in 14.01 and 14.02, based on who's teaching your courses - 14.01/2 are taught in both lecture-based format with a prof and recitation-based format where TAs teach you. i can honestly say some of the TA-led sections are pretty terrible).

Course 9 is considered, at least among my course 9 friends, to be one of the most engaging majors at MIT since course selection is very flexible, the material interesting, and the potential involvements you can have in course 9 urops to be pretty appealing. For example, 9.00 is often a pretty popular class (even to non-course 9 majors) and the department has to make 9.12 bcs major only due to interest from students in other majors. However, course 9 is also a course that many course 5 and course 7 (and engineering majors) switch into after they realize that their original major classes are too difficult. You can interpret this statistic as you will. But maybe I should leave the course 9 stuff for mollie, since she was a course 9 double major and she probably has a lot better comments than my limited knowledge.

jessiehl

That is because it is very flexible, so if you want to be a coward about it, you can take a relatively easier road. People who use that to slur the bulk of course 9 majors should be slapped down (figuratively, though I admit that actually slapping them is tempting). Having been a course 9 major with a bunch of classes in 7, 6, and 18 on the side, I did not consider my course 9 classes to be easier, as a group, than any of those others (also, sometimes course 9 classes are *also* course 6, 7, or some other major's classes).

Also, 9.07 (course 9 prob/stats, which is required for all course 9 majors) is harder than 18.440 (the math majors' probability class). I know this because I took most of 18.440 before dropping it, and I also took 9.07.

As to the OP's question...well, it depends on what classes you take. It also depends on what class formats you do well with. Course 9 class grading tends to be heavily exam-based. I never took course 14 classes, but it seemed from watching other people like they were usually more pset-based. Also, because course 9 classes are usually so exam-based, people think they can get away with spending very little time on these classes because they don't have to do a pset every week. I would, um, not recommend this, to say the least.

I will also note that 9/14 is an increasingly popular double major.

There is no reason, though, that you need to know a major at the start of your freshman year.

oasis

Completely not my intention, just for the record. =p

Personally, I get enough of the "course 7 are for people who can't handle engineering" already. But I did however never heard about 9.07 being easier than 18.440, but that's probably because I've only talked to math majors about it =p

prime235

I find the comments about economics interesting--isn't MIT ranked 1st (with chicago) in this field? Do they just not treat their undergrads as seriously as their grad students?

oasis

I think ranking undergraduates is not very informative. At any rate, I feel like you'll get decent instruction in the upper-level classes. It's just with a large number of undergrads taking 14.01 and 14.02 (I don't know why everyone comes in wanting to take econ - haha but maybe I'm not a good person to say so since I took it too even though I'm a bio major), I think the econ department has never found a way to teach those two classes well. Hence, you may or may not find these intro classes to be disorganized (again, I must emphasize that your learning style and who teaches you makes a HUGE difference).

However, once you get out of 14.01, 14.02, or even 14.05 (Macro after 14.02) and 14.03 (Micro after 14.01), you'll see that class size diminishes very quickly, which would be advantageous for you.

ps. I think a huge factor of the problem with TA-taught classes or recitations in Econ is that the Econ department has a very large number of foreign TAs. And truly no offense to their nationalities, but sometimes their thick accents make their teaching very hard to understand. It's interesting to note that I've never ran into such TAs in any other department.

Vivi

I took 14.01 spring semester of my freshman year (spring09) and my recitation section went through a total of four TA's (two of them were temporary for a week or two, I believe). Either way, most of them had heavy accents and deviated quite a bit from the material. I remember my TA Eric Weese went over an entire section that was never covered in 14.01 and never actually used in the class. Sure, it was interesting, but it was so far displaced from what we were actually learning that it ended up confusing us more than anything else.

Depending on if you take it in the fall or the spring, expect the exam styles to be drastically different as well. I've seen classmates cry over 14.01/14.02 tests, which are deceivingly hard. It's definitely a reward well worth the work if you pass, though - before the final I had a D in the class, and after slaving away endless hours, I came out of the class with a B+. 14.01 is also a popular HASS elective so you'll probably have lots of dormmates in the class as well. Last semester there were over 300 people enrolled!

jessiehl

The anecdata that I got from my friends who took it was that for people who are somewhat lopsided in their abilities or interests (i.e. serious writing sounds about as pleasant to them as someone pulling out their toenails), the idea of such a mathy HASS option is very appealing.

prime235

I've been hearing occasionally that people who major in BCS usually do it for medical school. Are there any people who major in this for other things, such as a research career or business?

prime235

Oh, and do people major in linguistics and go on to phd's in neuroscience? The writing experience offered in course 24 seems appealing.

molliebatmit

Me! And Jessie! There are a number of premeds in 9, but I'm not even sure I think it's the dominant choice (the way it seems to be in 7).

There's some information on life after course 9 on the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Society webpage here.

kryptonsa36

If the veracity of a statement is based only on the number of people I've heard claim this, then Course 9 has indeed become an increasingly more popular option for pre-meds than Course 7.