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Survey of MIT Students on their Stress
- taskstrike 14y agovery cool, but from a usability stand point, you should show all the questions without the collapsing. Have to click 2 times for answers is not optimal.
- revelation 14y agoAdd to that: it should be possible to link to the results of a specific question. Also, there is no mention of the sample size of each group.
- mayneack 14y agoReally? I thought I saw one for the majors. Might be wrong. edit: nope, you're right. I was remembering a different tech survey graphic.
- Xcelerate 14y agoMIT students don't know what stress is. Try Georgia Tech for that one. #2 least happy students in 2002.
- eltaco 14y agohell week -> dead week -> finals week
- tomx 14y agoI read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_week and don't see the point of this. It just seems like stressing people out due to poor coordination and time management.
- ruswick 14y agoAgreed. In this situation, the individual students have agency over their level of stress during that specific week. It's absurd to make generalizations about the school because a large number of individuals decide independent of one another and of the institution to waste time or to procrastinate.
- carb 14y agoDead week? MIT has dead Thursday and dead Friday. There is no week.
- mayneack 14y agoIt's quite the improvement from last year's Dead Friday (or last winter's dead Thursday with Friday finals.
- Xcelerate 14y agoExplain your downvote please. It's not at all helpful to me if you don't explain.
- Xcelerate 14y agoSeriously? Who are you? Why are you doing this?
- CamperBob2 14y agoMy guess is, somebody at MIT
- aw3c2 14y agoYou are already downvoted as I type this. I downvote you too. You say some gross generalisation and throw out some statistic without backing.
- systemizer 14y agoPerfect. now his average is at 3.14! Good job, sir.
- Xcelerate 14y agoFirst post in 159 days to point out that my average is close to pi? Yep, you definitely go to MIT :)
- Xcelerate 14y agohttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/humor?s=t http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/humor?s=t Also, if you want to get really pedantic about the joke, I did provide backing. You can easily check that Georgia Tech was ranked #2 in 2002 by the Princeton Review for least unhappy students. As MIT was not ranked #1 in this particular category (and they probably don't want to be), it would appear my statement is both true and supported.
- Shenglong 14y agoI know I'm judging, but wow, MIT students (for how smart they are in general) are not the most self-confident bunch... 9-21% of students think that next to the AVERAGE, their accomplishments are impressive. I expected this to be skewed above 50%. I wonder what response sets for this survey would be like at other schools.
- ScottBurson 14y agoYes, and only 31% consider themselves above average academically. I have to laugh, but it's also sad that so many MIT students feel so insecure. I think it must be the shock that comes from being at the top of one's high school, then arriving at MIT and no longer being head-and-shoulders above most of one's peers. Anyway, maybe the administration should see if there's something they can do to give students a more realistic view of where they stand.
- iamwil 14y agoI came here to point that out as well. But I was thinking it was a good thing, rather than a bunch of fools playing out the Dunning–Kruger effect. One of the more valuable things you can learn as a smart kid in college is that you're not the smartest kid around. It also means that they're being challenged at the school. There's plenty of schools that are hard to get in, but there's no challenge after you're in. Besides, I don't know about you, but I can't stand people that think (or pretend) they're heads and shoulders above in ability when they're not. http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N59/pressure/breakdown/year/index.htm http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N59/pressure/breakdown/year/index.h...
- bmiranda 14y agoFor me personally, most of the stress does come from being challenged academically.The professors pull no punches, and some of the classes are downright exhausting. Although I appreciate being challenged, it can be disheartening whenever I observe the local coding guru / math major knocking out problems in a fraction of the time it takes me. However, I believe that this student response best sums it up: "I still believe it’s true that at MIT, students generally compete more against themselves than against each other." Everyone simply wants to be the best that they can be. - MIT Sophomore in EECS
- rthomas6 14y agoWhat the hell is course 11??
- rdl 14y ago"Urban Studies and Planning". I went to MIT and honestly have no idea what it actually is (beyond the web descriptions of it), and never interacted with anyone from the program -- it's a very tiny program which seems inherently fuzzy. It's a tiny program, so I suspect a few people who responded really skewed the numbers.
- Symmetry 14y agoThe other half of the School of Architecture and Planning. Though among people I know, it seems everbody studies at the architecture half (course 4).
- neovive 14y agoPerhaps, the respondents are just being humble. Most MIT students must know that they are clearly above-average students. However, being humble and always striving to improve is a good trait. There does seem to be a trend of self-confidence improving year-over-year for undergraduates.
- karamazov 14y agoThe comparison is to other MIT students, not to students in general; these results didn't surprise me in that light.
- evoxed 14y agoI admit to a serious case of greener-grass syndrome, but it seems to me that the environment at MIT would do quite a bit to lower stress. In my experience, the primary source of stress when doing what interests you is dealing with people who are either disinterested or otherwise generating friction within the group (not comprehending, communicating, etc). The less of those types, the more stress you get just from doing hard work– something MIT and at least a few others should be perfectly capable of handling ;)
- snikolov 14y agoPeople who do hard work tend to bite off more than they can chew, especially at MIT, and there is obviously a limit to how much you can handle. What MIT does right when it comes to stress relief is its housing system. You get to pick where you want to live, and you mostly get your choice (or you can move eventually). That way you can live within a supportive community. It really makes a difference during those hell weeks. - MIT '11 MEng '12
- haldean 14y ago+1. Columbia is the same way; you're surrounded by talented people who don't need to be stressed, but they choose to be. A lot of people try to do everything (which many are used to from high school) and most find that it's too much too late. After a while, though, you find about the right balance. For most people, this happens second semester senior year (:
- jpdoctor 14y agoPerhaps this is a little bit of inside baseball, but LOL at the breakdown by Course number for "Academically, I would consider myself above average at MIT". Course 18 in the lead followed by 8 5 and 6. The only thing that's changed in the past few decades is that 5 is getting a bit more uppity.
- ipince 14y agoFor those who don't know the numbers, 18, 8, 5, and 6 correspond to the sciences, math, physics, chemistry, and EECS, respectively.
- starpilot 14y agohttp://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/
- mhb 14y agoFor those of us, it would be thoughtful to reveal that in some way in the graphs. Do MIT students really memorize the correspondence of course numbers to subjects?
- 2arrs2ells 14y agoThey do. There's even an MIT "joke" that's just a string of course numbers followed by "out," indicating the stereotypical path of a struggling MIT student.
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- aclimatt 14y agoVery interesting. Some people take this to think MIT students have self-image problems, but I don't see that. To me I see this as most students reasonably confident with their own abilities (although feel they could do a bit better academically, although those are just high standards), but are very humble about themselves relative to their peers. Compared to most groups in life, this is a very rare breed of "yes I know I'm amazing, but I know the people around me are REALLY amazing". Which I'd argue is shockingly healthy for such a large group of people so smart and under so much pressure.
- ruswick 14y agoThe gender breakdowns are of particular fascination.
- brisance 14y agoYes. What does "Other" mean?
- kmfrk 14y ago"Male/Female" genders are social constructs. Had they asked something along the lines of "Sex: Man/Woman?" or allowed for an LGBTQ (etc.) answer, the answers would have been more useful. Of course, it is often a good idea to ask a question, only if you are looking for a way to use the information. It's really sloppy for an MIT survey to half-ass a question like that. I'm sure I'm getting some terminology wrong, but this is the gist of it.
- sp332 14y agoOther could be somewhere on the spectrum between male and female without quite feeling comfortable calling yourself either. (Transgender, maybe even pre-op or post-op gender change.) Or it could mean asexual.
- geofft 14y ago"Asexual" isn't the term you're looking for -- asexuality has no more to do with what gender you identify as than heterosexuality, bisexuality, etc. do. The concepts might be related for some people, but they aren't inherently so.
- frozenport 14y ago40% of urban planning majors pull an all-nighter at-least once a week.
- evolve2k 14y agoI'm looking on my iPhone and all the colors seem the same, how do I read this?