College Spotlight: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

by Jessica Chen

Today's College Spotlight post features a college that is a JIF summer program partner. The JIF blog​ ​team also releases posts detailing colleges that a JIF alumna is currently attending and colleges that will be attending the Joyce Ivy​ ​College Admissions Symposium (JCAS)​.

Statistics 

Location: Cambridge, MA

Acceptance Rate: 7.9%
Tuition & Fees: Tuition & Fees: $48,452
Housing & Dining: $14,210
Books & Personal Expenses: $2,816
Total: $65,478
Website: Admissions: http://mitadmissions.org/ General: http://web.mit.edu/ 

Facts 

1. Majors, courses, and buildings are known by numbers instead of names. For example, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is Course 6-2, and the mechanical engineering capstone course is called 2.009 (pronounced “two-double-oh-nine).
2. With 33 varsity sports teams and 1 in 5 MIT students participating in varsity athletics. MIT has the largest DIII athletics program in the nation. MIT also offers 30+ club teams, and 18 intramural sports for non-varsity athletes or students who just want to stay active.
3. MIT is known to embody the “work hard, play hard” mentality, which is especially evident in their infamous “hacks” (pranks). Hacks involved placing a police car with the license "IHTFP", the abbreviation for MIT's unofficial slogan, on top of the Great Dome, hacking the scoreboard during a Harvard-Yale football game to change Harvard’s logo from VE-RI-TAS to HU-GE-EGO instead. Also known for their fierce rivalry with Caltech, MIT hackers once stole the 130-year-old, 1.7 ton Fleming House Cannon from Caltech’s campus and sneaked it across the country back to Cambridge, where they fitted a 24K gold-plated Brass Rat (MIT’s graduation ring) over the barrel of the cannon.
4. Every freshman required to live on campus, where they can choose from the 11 residence halls, each with their own distinct culture. Options include McCormick, the all-female dorm, Next, the largest dorm, which puts on student musicals and plays through NextAct and baking events through NextBake, and East Campus, known to have a strong maker culture as well as painted walls & lots of dyed hair.
5. MIT’s student culture filled with many unusual traditions including the Baker House Piano Drop, which celebrates Drop Date, the last date classes can be dropped. Baker House residents drop an old piano from six stories up on the roof, and the resulting noise is known as a unit of sound volume called the Bruno.