Help a pre-frosh with HASS related ?s

Colleges & Universities Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Sure, a lot of people take 14.01/14.02.</p>

<p>It doesn’t really matter whether you take a CI-H before or not, unless you might want sophomore standing (in which case you need to take a CI-H first semester). Otherwise, you need to take one CI-H freshman year, and it doesn’t matter whether you take it first or second semester. </p>

<p>It can be nice to get HASS-Ds out of the way early, so you don’t have to worry about fulfilling the requirement later, but it’s certainly not necessary to do so. If you want to take 14.01 first semester, then go ahead – it certainly saves you the hassle of having to enter the HASS-D lottery this summer.</p>

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<p>Thanks molliebatmit. I’ve been hearing a bit about this “sophomore standing” thing - can you tell me a little more about it, like how many credits I need or what classes I need to take? Also, I believe we no longer have HASS-D requirements?</p>

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<p>^ Sophomore standing is defined as:</p>

<p>1) You have the equivalent credits of a normal student after a year of college after your first semester at MIT (96 credits…48 credits is a “normal load” per semester)</p>

<p>2) You have finished the majority science GIR courses</p>

<p>3) You have completed a CI-H HASS</p>

<p>The first requirement is pretty simple - after the first semester, you need to have completed 96 credits.</p>

<p>The second requirement is a bit nebulous - but the science GIRs are 18.01, 18.02, 7.01x, 8.01x, 8.02x, and 5.11x/3.091. So, I assume if you complete 4 out of the 6 by the end of first sem, you will have completed the majority of the science GIRs. I passed out of 18.01, took 18.02, 7.01x, and 8.01x first sem and qualified for advanced soph standing.</p>

<p>3) You must take a CI-H HASS class, so make sure to put this into your schedule.</p>

<p>Overall, I would say that a typical applicant will probably come in having passed out of 18.01, so that’s 12 credits right there. That plus 48 credits (3 science + HASS) frosh year or 54 credits (plus advising seminar) would mean that you would need to have either 36 or 30 additional credits coming into MIT. If you don’t have any transfer credit, this means you need to have taken 3-4 AP courses that MIT could give general elective credit for (9 units…most humanities APs qualify, but not the science ones). </p>

<p>The advantages of early soph standing is primarily you won’t have the silly 54 credit cap second semester. It’s a lot easier to take 5 classes, rather than 4.5 classes. The difference between ABC/NR and ABCDF shouldn’t be that drastic.</p>

<p>Yes, you guys don’t have HASS-D requirements anymore. Just take one each from the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and you’re set! (basically the new requirement streamlined the HASS-D categories, so there aren’t so many of them) IMO I think this new system is a lot more flexible and includes more HASS classes, so it’s great for you guys. I’m not sure what they’ll be doing with the HASS-D lottery actually in the future. The HASS-D system will remain unchanged till at least the class of 2014 become seniors (2014s are the first class affected by the new requirement), but you guys will be operating under the new system jointly with the existing HASS-D people.</p>

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<p>^Thanks for the explanation. So if I have 3 humanities AP credits, test out of 18.01 + 18.02, take 18.03, 8.02, 7.013 and a CI-H class, I should qualify right?</p>

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<p>^ Yes, except if you’re taking bio in the fall it’s 7.012. The other option is to do chem in the fall (3.091, 5.111, 5.112). 7.013 is bio in the spring (7.014 also being available in the spring)</p>

<p>Also, credit limit freshman spring is 57 (54 in the fall) so that’s 4.75 classes. Lot’s of departments, including Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science/Engineering, offer introductory 9 credit subjects that take you to this limit with 4 full classes. Also, programs like Freshman/Alumni Summer Internship Program are 9 credits too. My point being that the credit limit does not have to be obstructive, unless you specifically want 5 full classes.</p>

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<p>I heard having sophomore standing also allows me to declare my major a semester early, meaning that I would have a course adviser before most other people. Hence, it seems that there would be many advantages of doing so.</p>

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<p>Oh yes, the frosh spring limit is 57, not 54 - my bad.</p>

<p>So you know, I actually took one of those 9-unit seminars (20.20, in particular) and I thought it was a horrific waste of time (which precipitated me to declare sophomore standing ASAP). The problem with those seminars is that they are very exploratory, and I didn’t really believe I was learning anything concrete. It was very much of a “oh hey this is what this major is supposed to be like but you don’t know anything yet so we’ll just let you play with some toys for now” kind of thing for a loooong time. I thought it was quite a waste of time so I really preferred being able to take 60 units so I could knock another one of my major requirements out of the way. As for FASIP - well, people either really like it or really hate it, so you can see how it goes.</p>

<p>Re: major adviser - so yes, by declaring soph standing you do get your major adviser a semester early, but it’s really not as useful as it might sound, generally because if you want a major adviser to advise you on the major, you can do the same just by going to the undergraduate office for the major and just be like, “hey, so I’m a freshman deciding to major in your department, and I have the following questions…” It’s sad for me to say so, but a lot of the undergraduate major advisers here are engrossed in their research and the odds are good that they won’t actually spend an hour speaking with you about how you should map out your major (which is something you probably would like to see happen in your ideal world). It is cool to see your WebSIS change from undesignated to a number a whole semester early than your peers though ; )</p>

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<p>2000th post!! : D I remember I created a thread in the Princeton forum dedicating my 1000th post to Pton a month or so before ED decisions. They responded by deferring then rejecting me -____- well, this post is in honor of MIT then : ) Incredible how long it took me to get from 1k to 2k, haha =p yay!</p>