MIT ‘Humanities’
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Anonymous
| My spouse knows a history professor at MIT. She says the students are all very smart. |
Anonymous
OP specifically mentioned econ as an example so people responded with econ |
Anonymous
My son briefly considered applying to MIT 2 years ago and we went on a tour. He's a great math student, but his real interest is politics and eventually law school. I specifically asked the tour guide if anyone ever only majored in political science without adding something more STEM related and she basically said no. I also remembering looking at the number of graduates who were political science majors and I think it was like 6. Lots of students do take history, philosophy, etc. classes and I am sure they are great, but no one really goes to MIT to major in the humanities. Loved the school, though, as well Cambridge. |
Anonymous
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Econ and Business are great at MIT.
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Anonymous
I definitely know of MIT students who took courses at Harvard in subjects not offered at MIT. They still graduated with some kind of STEM degree, though. |
Anonymous
| They actually have some great humanities degrees. But everyone has to take the core math and science classes. |
Anonymous
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Econ at MIT is very math-focused
Business at MIT is excellent (I hear — I confess I avoided Sloan entirely) but you still have to do the distribution requirements of physics, calc, bio, chemistry Philosophy and Linguistics are good but a little unusually focused is my understanding More standard humanities majors like history, English, anthropology, etc are options but very small (less than 10 graduates every year) and almost all of them have another more STEM-y major. You won’t get a mainstream humanities degree from MIT because there’s not enough students to cover all the basic classes all the time. So you’ll get a very odd mix of class options and most of your classmates will be doing in for a single class rather majoring in the subject. I don’t know anyone who applied and entered MIT with the intention of being a solely humanities major. I do know some people who discovered a love of humanities while they were there and ended up majoring in just English (having rotated through chemistry, chemical engineering, math, and dual math/english first). You can crossregister at Harvard for more standard humanities classes but MIT and Harvard block their days differently so it’s hard to make it work, although Harvard classes are excellent! I don’t know anyone who went to tufts or Wellesley for cross registered classes. |
Anonymous
| What about women’s studies? |
Anonymous
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Econ was one of the hardest, most "mathy" courses I took at MIT.
But on another note, the humanities classes at MIT are top-notch. I absolutely adored the history and philosophy classes that I took in my 4 yrs. And yes, MIT students often take Harvard classes - especially language classes that aren't offered at MIT. Short bus ride from 77 mass ave to harvard square. |
Anonymous
Last I checked (it’s been a while) that was only a concentration or minor, not a major. |
Anonymous
| Political science is very well respected at MIT |
Anonymous
They have an entire Humanities college, as do most/all "tech" schools: https://shass.mit.edu/undergraduate/majors |
Anonymous
Econ is considered humanities at MIT for the purpose of fulfilling graduation requirements, although it's basically math. |
Anonymous
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Do MIT students with an interest in the humanities ever cross-enroll at Harvard, Tufts or Wellesley? Yes. They can cross-enroll at Harvard (short ride on the T) or at Wellesley, but Harvard is more common given it's an easy/short commute on the T. The only catch is that Harvard's semester starts & ends ~ 1 week earlier than MIT's, but it's not that hard to manage. |
Anonymous
No, economics is a social science major at MIT (and elsewhere). HASS stands for Humanities and Social Sciences. |