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<p>There is a lot of ignorance in this paragraph. I will start at the beginning. MIT has top notch research, but it is far from the only school with top notch research, particularly in aeronautics, where it is good but I can think of a handful of schools right off the bat that I would place above it for aeronautics research. I mean, in aeronautics, it’s no Caltech…</p>
<p>Second, limiting yourself to “close to home” for graduate school is very foolish. You should be looking at programs that are strong in a specific field in which you are interested. When I say that, I don’t just mean “aeronautics”, but something more specific like “boundary layer stability” or “shape memory alloys” or other specific research areas like that. You may not know exactly what you want to do yet, but you ought to have at least a list of possibilities, so you should be looking for schools with strong research in those areas. Limiting yourself to “close to home” limits your ability to get the most out of graduate school.</p>
<p>Last, not having safety schools is just completely reckless. The chances of MIT are so, so slim already. Have you thought about what you will do if you don’t get in? Shoot, do you even know what you want to research if you do?</p>