In my experience, MIT chemical engineering faculty want their students to fail. I earned my PhD from this department (or should I say, in spite of this department). I believe some of them view their students as a potential future threat to them and try to force them out of research and academia. This includes, in my experience, ignoring requests for well-deserved reference letters and even publishing their student’s work in their own paper without giving appropriate credit to the student (and I have documented proof of this). Students seem happier and more successful generally at other universities.
First post and already bad-mouthing?
Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt, that your bad experience is real. But one can’t make a blanket statement about the whole department based on the behavior of “some of them.” As everywhere in the world, there are bad people, so-so people, and good people in any department of any university.
How many students at other universities did you talk to to justify the statement, “Students seem happier and more successful generally at other universities.”?
Sounds like the guy who shot the UCLA professor yesterday.
MIT sucks!! Only the very best and brightest go there. 
@coolweather Is that flippant, serious, or just super insulting to the OP?? I can’t tell
Excellent, let’s see it.
I think this is a serious issue if it exists, and it wouldn’t surprise me that someone sufficiently Machiavellian to become an MIT professor has this attitude. But the whole department? I would love to see any proof.
It’s a large department however.
Robert Langer seems to turn his students into founders of his startups. That doesn’t seem like a bad deal.