Yesterday I enrolled at a college that participates in cross-registration at MIT, and this is obviously an interesting opportunity given that I was rejected but still wish to get a bit of the MIT experience. At the same time…signing up for an MIT while not actually attending does not sound like a smart idea, knowing that the work is difficult and I’d probably need to collaborate with some of the people in my class, which would be hard to do while attending a different school.
still, it sounds so appealing and I’d like some others’ opinons (more like I would like a few people to tell me I’m out of my mind to stop me from making this horrible decision!)
I knew a number of people who cross-registered, either MIT students cross-registering (mostly at Harvard) or Harvard and Wellesley students crossregistering at MIT. I got the impression that people generally really enjoyed the experience of cross-registration – it’s fun to get out of your immediate environment every once in a while and do something new.
I think the logistical ease of cross-registration is a little tougher for students at Wellesley, just due to the distance, but for students at Harvard, it really isn’t so bad. (My freshman year physics lab partner lived in a frat across the river, so I would go over there once a week to work on problem sets, which isn’t actually much further than the distance from Harvard to MIT.)
Honestly, I don’t think there’s any downside to registering for a class that you find interesting, and then trying it out for a few weeks to see if you find the logistics prohibitive. You can always drop if you don’t like it, but, from my experience, a lot of people really enjoy themselves.
One caveat is exam schedules. The MIT and Harvard schedules do not often line up precisely and Harvard often has finals during IAP. I was in the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble while at MIT and one of my fellow Ensemble members got excited at the prospect of reading the original King Lear legends in the original Gaelic. Now MIT’s Foreign Languages and Literatures program does not teach Gaelic, but it turns out that Harvard’s does. So he cross registered. That January, while the ensemble was on tour in California, this person had to, in the middle of the tour, take a 3 hour Gaelic exam proctored by the Ensemble director. Doable, but not vast quantities of fun.
Of course, if you are considering cross-registration from one of the two specialist schools which offer cross-reg with MIT: Mass College of Art and Design, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, then all bets are off. I do not know that I ever met a student from either of those schools on campus. As a result, I really do not feel qualified to say anything at all about those two schools for cross-reg.
Actually, Harvard changed their schedule a few years ago (my first or second year in grad school) – the semesters at Harvard and MIT line up much better now, and Harvard has an MIT-like J-term.
I agree that the previous schedule mis-match was a big impediment to cross-registration, and I think it’s good that teh schedules are better aligned.
Ahhh… Thanks for that @MolliebatMIT. I carefully follow all of the changes as they occur at MIT, but I do not monitor Harvard (or Wellesley or MassArt or SMFA) hardly at all. Or for that matter Brandeis, but cross-reg at Brandeis is only relevant for DUSP (course 11) majors where MIT students can take courses at Brandeis in Social Welfare, and Brandeis students can take courses at MIT in Urban Planning.
Harvard and MIT do not really line up. Their spring breaks are at different times. Also it is a hassle to get between the campuses especially in February not to mention office hours and sections which can present a problem. That is why only a few students do it
I’m not sure I necessarily agree that it is a hassle to get between the campuses. Of course, your experiences may vary and it depends on where you live. If you live in east campus, it is two stops away on the red line from Kenmore. If on west campus, it is the Mass Ave bus. It is not in interconnected corridors, but it is really not a huge trek. It is a much longer journey to live in a fraternity in Boston and to get onto campus for classes each day. During winter, Polar Bears (or wind that feels like Polar Bears) are known to attack unwary travelers on the Mass Ave bridge, and yet, I was very grateful to live in Boston, and wouldn’t have wanted to live elsewhere. The definition of “hassle” may vary.