<p>Oh man, your son will definitely not have class at 8am, the earliest classes start at 9am. And chances are, he probably won’t have class at 9am either. Also, it won’t be a block of class straight through the day, he will most likely have breaks. I think freshman year, I had about 4 hours of class a day.</p>
<p>Aside from the start times, this isn’t unique to MIT, as far as I can tell - people generally spend less time explicitly in class in college than they do in high school.</p>