<p>The GIRs form the base knowledge for a lot of majors. Sometimes it’s unwise to push them off (and a lot of students take the mentality of “get them out of the way and spend 3 years doing what they really want to do”). That said, if you plan right, you can push them off :). I’m taking 8.02 (physics II) and 5.111 (chem) first term sophomore year, and then I’ll be done with the science core.</p>
<p>You can put off GIRs, but for one reason or another your frosh adviser will almost certainly push you to complete the majority of them before your first year ends. </p>
<p>There are a number of people who choose to reserve 8.02 or intro bio till their senior year just because they don’t need biology or physics for their major, however.</p>
<p>Like Piper said, I think it’s not a bad idea to finish off GIRs because they are good intro classes not only to the subjects themselves, but also how MIT courses function and operate. In a sense, they almost are the transition courses between high school to full-blown classes in your selected major. Also, many majors do require you to finish a number of the GIRs as prereqs to the actual major classes, so I don’t think you’ll be successful in completely putting all the GIRs off. </p>
<p>Anyways, this isn’t usually a big issue. Frosh will find out where they need to be.</p>
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I don’t know. I don’t think they’ve looked too much into it yet since they won’t be taking it until the beginning of next school year. I’m interested to see if they run into the same problems. And I bet they’ll be interested in the “suprisingly difficult” tidbit. :P</p>