According to College Navigator (http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=mass+institute+of+tech&s=all&id=166683), of 1099 MIT undergrads who graduated in 2015,
18 majored in business
7 majored in cognitive science
28 majored in econ
3 majored in poli sci
0 majored in science, technology, and society
1016 majored in engineering/science/CS/math
27 majored in something else
This despite the fact that MIT is very strong in the social sciences. Econ and business, yes, but also psychology/cognitive science and poli sci.
Unless I am missing something, it seems like a lot of HS kids are lemmings (granted, to be fair, I was too to an extent when I was in HS).
If interested in STEM, apply to MIT. If interested in social science, ignore MIT even though MIT is renown in some of those social science fields and class sizes almost certainly are small since almost no one is majoring in those fields at MIT.
I have to think that this is an undervalued opportunity for some kids.
Except, @ucbalumnus, UChicago requires just as many science and math classes as MIT (6) and they’ve got no shortage of applicants looking to major in a social science. Some other elite unis/colleges also have gen ed requirements that require as much math and science as MIT and have a ton more social science majors.
Not sure I’d call kids at a premier tech school lemmings for majoring in stem. And they can satisfy a variety of academic interests through non-stem courses, without majoring. Sounds good to me.
MIT announced, maybe just two months ago, some major changes to the science, technology and society course. I cannot remember what exactly, but I think they are expanding the program to include those whose fields of study were not normally included under the STS framework.
I would not, of course, advise kids to study elsewhere for some of these courses, when, as you state, the class sizes must be small. Sounds like a great opportunity for study may exist.
Chicago requires 6 quarter science courses, versus 6 semester science courses at MIT. Also, it looks like Chicago students do not have to take as difficult science and math courses as MIT students.
I’m not quite sure I understand your argument here. MIT is a STEM focused school. It’s rather like saying kids who go to Juilliard are “lemmings” for majoring mostly in music. It’s the whole raison d’être.
@Pizzagirl, that’s the point I’m getting at: MIT is perceived as a STEM-focused school, but it actually is one of the world’s top research unis in the social sciences as well as one of the world’s best in STEM subjects. I don’t believe that MIT administration and faculty care only about preeminence in STEM subjects and little else. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered building up one of the top econ departments in the world as well as an M7 b-school. MIT isn’t Caltech (or Julliard).
Yet there seems to be a major disconnect between the perception of MIT and its actual strengths.
@ucbalumnus, true, UChicago has really watered down its Core. These days, they’re just a bunch of distribution requirements with a name on it, but even when UChicago had a real Core, they were getting a bunch of kids who wanted to study a social science despite the Core requirements.
The equivalent would be if everybody at JHU only studied something bio/health-related (or at least something in STEM) and almost nobody there studied music or international affairs or writing despite it being renown in those subjects.
It’s very lemming-like. And @lookingforward, I don’t blame kids interested in STEM for aiming for MIT. Rather, I think kids interested in social sciences are the lemmings here for not considering MIT.
MIT does require social science/humanities students to take higher levels of STEM courses to fu;lfill core requirements. An in-law who was a social science major mentioned taking several courses with labs, math to calc 3 level, etc. Even many elite colleges don't require non-stem majors to take STEM courses to that extent to fulfill distribution requirements.
No surprise that being a hardcore STEM college, many of MIT's social science departments emphasize quantitative analysis to a much greater extent....some would argue at the expense of other approaches than many other colleges. Social science majors preferring more of a qualitative approach may not find MIT's social science departments to be a conducive environment for them. This issue isn't limited to MIT as NYU's poli-sci department has similar issues which was the reason why an older college classmate who preferred a qualitative approach was strongly advised by an experienced prominent poli-sci Prof to NOT apply to NYU for poli-sci grad school.
Some social science departments,,,notably poli-sci have had close links with the US military/security establishment which may be considered problematic for potential social science majors with serious issues with US military/security policies for political reasons.
Not sure if things have changed in the last 5-10 years, but from my own observations from multiple visits to the MIT campus and talking with friends who were MIT undergrad/grad students mostly in the engineering/CS or natural sciences, there's a prevailing STEM uber alles attitude among many MIT students which meant students majoring in business or social science/humanities are viewed as "weaker students". That in-law recounted encountering this attitude whenever her social science major came up with countless MIT classmates who were STEM majors. Some aspiring social science majors may have heard about this issue from older HS classmates or relatives who are MIT students/alums and decide they're not interested in being treated as second-class citizens academically and socially.
To some extent, it’s the flipside of the issue a HS classmate/engineering major encountered when she turned down MIT for Harvard DEAS: She recounted that as a Harvard engineering major in the mid-late '90s, she felt Harvard DEAS and its students were “the neglected stepchild of FAS”. Only in the MIT social science major’s case…it’s mainly the campus culture/social experience in which STEM majors…especially engineering/CS majors dominate and the business/social science/humanities majors are the “neglected stepchildren”.
I wonder whether the small number of undergraduates in non-STEM majors at MIT discovered their interests in those fields after enrolling. Or perhaps they discovered that they didn’t like their intended STEM major somewhere along the way and were seeking an alternative.
To me, it doesn’t make sense that a kid who was interested in econ or business or poli sci before starting college would choose MIT. There are so many other schools – some as academically rigorous as MIT – where they would have more peers who would share their interests.
@Marian, by that reasoning, kids wouldn’t choose LACs, where, outside of maybe the most popular few majors, there would be only a handful of kids in your class in the major you choose.
@cobrat, I suppose. On the quantitative aspect, though, the trend in social sciences is towards a more quantitative approach in almost all disciplines, not less.
@Marian Anecdotal evidence for sure, but I know exactly one student who is a recent grad of MIT and she very much fits the description in your post #12. Intended to be a STEM major, fell in love with something else, lamented the fact that MIT wasn’t supportive as a community of non-STEM majors/lacked non-STEM focus.
Marian has it right. Why would you choose a deliberately STEM heavy school if you were interested in something else and your peers would all be interested in STEM? (That’s the difference between your argument above. At a LAC you might be in a small major, but your peers would be interested in a variety of different things.)
I have one who majored in Econ and one in Poli Sci / history. I would never have advised them to look at MIT. Better they be surrounded by people in a lot of different fields, not just STEM. Aren’t you kind of a proponent of a school we both know where the liberal arts students have the benefit of “mingling” with engineering, journalism, speech/theater, music and education students? Having lots of different majors around you is a feature, not a bug.
I’m not getting who you’re calling “lemmings.” Is it the students who go to Massachusetts Institute of TECHNOLOGY who want to major in STEM so that’s why they go there, and then don’t change their majors?
Or is it the thousands of other students in the country who are interested in soc sciences and are lemmings for going to wherever they go, because it’s not MIT?
Neither of those conclusions makes any sense, really.
It depends on how comfortable you are with being around multitudes of STEM people, I suppose. But I don’t see people say that someone interested in writing shouldn’t consider JHU just because JHU also has a ton of STEM majors (and very few humanities majors besides music, it seems): http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Johns+hopkins&s=all&id=162928
I mean, they’re not arriving at MIT as freshmen, looking around naively, and saying, “oh, look, lots of STEM majors here, guess I’ll have to major in it too.”
@garland: You’re proving my point again. People are focusing on name/perception rather than actual strengths (and those would be who I call lemmings).
If UChicago changed its name to the Chicago School of Economics and Political Science, it would still be a powerhouse in the sciences, regardless of what its name is.