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It is true – MIT undergrads are admitted to the program, but they’re encouraged to go elsewhere, which is true of most science departments at MIT (and at other schools).</p>
<p>I think it would be really unwise for this information to cause anyone not to choose MIT as an undergraduate. Your grad school choice will be dictated primarily by your research interests and your desire to work with particular faculty members, not by things like school culture, and you don’t know what your precise research interests are at this point, so there’s no reason to avoid a particular school just because you won’t do your PhD there. If you complete your undergraduate degree in physics at MIT, there will be plenty of other doors open for you.</p>