5 ms·

I went to MIT too and with the exception of about three classes, every single in-person class was a waste. The value the school offers is, in order: - the peop

I went to MIT too and with the exception of about three classes, every single in-person class was a waste. The value the school offers is, in order: - the people you meet - the brand name on your resume - the psets and structured guide to learning hard things Notice that the last two still work over Zoom. If I were in the hard sciences this might be different but as a professional Software Engineer, the classes were almost entirely irrelevant to me.

JCharante 7y ago
Regarding the people you meet, if class resumes normally in the fall then you're only missing 1/2 semester worth of networking.
bilbo0s 7y ago
I disagree. Maybe your specialty is a different case, but there's no way on Earth that I would have gotten access to the equipment I used without the lab. Doesn't have to be MIT's lab, but someone has to have the ridiculous amounts of money necessary to construct and outfit advanced research labs if a student is to replicate that experience. And that hypothetical, "someone", would have been unlikely to allow me to use it simply because I taught myself a bit about, say, nanomaterials online. Let's be frank, if you need a lab, you're screwed.
- ghaff 7y ago
  That seems like the most difficult situation. I also assume that there are a lot of people who are/were on track to graduate who need to finish an undergraduate thesis. (I assume those are still required for some majors.) There are only two real choices at this point I would think: Pretend everyone completed the current semester's coursework/projects satisfactorily or require a summer session or some other form of make up time.
toephu2 7y ago
> every single in-person class was a waste. Hundreds of thousands of people have graduated from MIT. I don't think you can categorically say in-person class is a waste for everyone. As with many things in life, YMMV. Your one anecdotal experience is not going to be the same for everyone.
gumby 7y ago
I’m sorry you felt that way because for me a huge proportion of the value was the human stuff, not just “networking” which wasn’t even called that back then, but doing pests with others (learning) talking to profs, being exposed via meatspace serendipity to hints I would not otherwise have seen or done, and the like. I did skip most of the big lecture freshman classes (I was in ESG) which would not have worked for me (my HS graduating class was 39) but apart from them the classes tend to be relatively small. I’ve never really noticed the value of the brand name but perhaps that’s a sign that it works so well :-(

JCharante 7y ago

Regarding the people you meet, if class resumes normally in the fall then you're only missing 1/2 semester worth of networking.

bilbo0s 7y ago

I disagree. Maybe your specialty is a different case, but there's no way on Earth that I would have gotten access to the equipment I used without the lab. Doesn't have to be MIT's lab, but someone has to have the ridiculous amounts of money necessary to construct and outfit advanced research labs if a student is to replicate that experience. And that hypothetical, "someone", would have been unlikely to allow me to use it simply because I taught myself a bit about, say, nanomaterials online. Let's be frank, if you need a lab, you're screwed.

ghaff 7y ago
That seems like the most difficult situation. I also assume that there are a lot of people who are/were on track to graduate who need to finish an undergraduate thesis. (I assume those are still required for some majors.) There are only two real choices at this point I would think: Pretend everyone completed the current semester's coursework/projects satisfactorily or require a summer session or some other form of make up time.

toephu2 7y ago

> every single in-person class was a waste. Hundreds of thousands of people have graduated from MIT. I don't think you can categorically say in-person class is a waste for everyone. As with many things in life, YMMV. Your one anecdotal experience is not going to be the same for everyone.

gumby 7y ago

I’m sorry you felt that way because for me a huge proportion of the value was the human stuff, not just “networking” which wasn’t even called that back then, but doing pests with others (learning) talking to profs, being exposed via meatspace serendipity to hints I would not otherwise have seen or done, and the like. I did skip most of the big lecture freshman classes (I was in ESG) which would not have worked for me (my HS graduating class was 39) but apart from them the classes tend to be relatively small. I’ve never really noticed the value of the brand name but perhaps that’s a sign that it works so well :-(