I guess it happens everywhere.. at the engineering college of the local Universidad de la República (Uruguay), there is a first-year course on advanced calculus which serves as a filter (1500 go in... maybe 50 graduate), because as it is a "free" (as in, you don't have to pay) university and resources are scarce, they need to weed out people somehow.
The result is that poor students from inland, whose parents make financial sacrifices to support them (living in the capital is very expensive for them, and the classes are structured so you can't have a side job) have committed suicide (2 in the years I was there) from being unable to pass that course (I never passed it either, so I switched what you would call "majors" in the US)
I went through cmu miserable. It's fine, suffering brings out the best in me. But I like that poem, and the thought that someone actually jumped does not ruin it for me. To jump is to escape, and that poem is a sweet reminder that you have that right.
I've always wondered what goes on in people's heads when they jump down something like that. Do they ever muse about the irony of what they just committed?
Despite MIT's reputation for entrepreneurship, it's been difficult to find collaborators actually willing to take the start-up plunge--perhaps especially in grad school.
While MIT prides itself in admitting students with passion and interests over those with 1600 (I suppose 2400, now) SAT scores, I think that the truth is that the overwhelming majority of the students who admitted are still the type to overachieve, overcommit, and - most importantly - follow the rules. To get good grades in high school, you turn in all the assignments, complete tasks (as inane as they may seem), and take the tests.
What this turns into, from my experience, is a large set of students who are not natural risk takers. What's more, I'd argue that MIT makes it or made it difficult to take risks and explore on your own. They load you down with work, pressure you into taking on a UROP (undergrad research for the uninitiated), and it's a rare student who has a significant project on the side as well.
In contrast, places like Stanford seem to encourage thinking outside of the box / trying different things. Their culture definitely doesn't seem like it slants toward loading yourself up with classes as a badge of honor, and I think that's a hugely positive effect on the ability of students to find time to dream. It feels like a cop-out answer, but I've finally admitted to myself recently that this east coast - west coast cultural divide (see inmygarage, above) does exist, and is incredibly influential.
So while the students who have left MIT and become successful are well-known and, frankly, represent, their reputation is disproportionate to their number. You don't see* MIT sophomores walking around handing out business cards for their "startup" - and I don't think it'd be such a bad thing if that changed.
I'm not sure that lack of time to daydream is an east-coast/west-coast thing. Amherst is also on the east coast, and it (and I've heard many of the other "little Ivy" liberal arts colleges) encourages you to take a reasonable, balanced courseload and have time for things outside of school. I would say (based on who my friends are at Google) that Amherst and Brown are culturally much closer to Stanford than to MIT, despite being geographically clumped in New England.
The lack of a supportive environment for startups, and consequent lack of risk-taking, is an east-coast/west-coast thing. There aren't very many Amherst entrepreneurs. Most of my classmates did the minimum-wage "life experience" thing before finally going to law school when they wanted to settle down. It's like MIT encourages you to work really hard, Stanford encourages you to find your passion and then work really hard, and Amherst just encourages you to find your passion.
I went to Amherst, and I think you're spot-on with the east-coast mentality. In my experience, most of the students there just got onto the law-school/grad-school/Wall-Street bus and sailed comfortably into their next gig.
It's also worth noting that Harvard used to actively encourage undergraduates to take a year off to recharge their batteries and get a better sense of life outside of college.
While there's somewhat of a culture of being "hardcore" and taking lots of classes at MIT, I find that many people abandon that mentality after their freshman year. In reality, most people are just trying to get by with the minimum 4 classes, which can already be a lot of work. The question is whether the others that have the intelligence/work ethic/time management skills/etc to take on more work are inclined to load up on more classes or take on side projects.
The answer depends a good deal on the kind of MIT subculture you live in. I live in a place where people like to build awesome things, and frankly, I feel a lot more guilty about not making enough time to hack on side projects than I do about not taking more classes.
On the other hand, in certain other dorms there are strong communities of math/cs/physics olympians, some of whom regularly take 8+ classes a semester.
Yes, I definitely got this vibe when I visited, and that's why I applied to Stanford (and got in!) and not MIT.
I got there and I asked my host and many of his floormates how they liked MIT and the response from everyone was pretty much "I love it, but there's so much work." And my host (a freshman, which meant he should have been taking fairly easy classes and that he was taking them all pass/no record) talking about spending 8-10 hours on the average PSET for one of his classes didn't help.
I really got the impression that it would be hard for me to find significant time to hack/start a startup, which isn't ok with me.
how long of a response do you want on this? i've got lots of theories.
i suppose you can make this argument for any top engineering school, but anyway:
1. the economy is starting to pick up - the activity on the eecs jobs list is crazy. hundreds of emails a week for any possible hott tech job you could imagine.
2. there's a pretty palpable division between the business school and the rest of campus. another topic entirely, and one that's likely been debated ad nauseam on HN.
3. people at mit are not short on opinions, and some would-be entrepreneurs have trouble handling it when someone (especially a professor they respect, for example) tells them their idea won't work. see #1, rinse, repeat.
4. there's also the whole east coast/west coast theories on startups + entrepreneurship that's relevant here as well. i wouldn't say acceptance of failure is "alive and well" on the east coast.
5. the e-center at MIT has undergone almost a complete makeover (both ideologically and physically) in the past 6 months with the new managing director, and hopefully there's more to come in the next few years.
We need to blackhole every single one of the 55 users who upvoted this submissions. This is precisely the kind of stuff that will turn HN into digg. What's next - lolcats? Seriously?
