My First Visit by Cristen C. '10

I realize that some of my readers may not have had the opportunity to visit MIT yet. They may never walk the tunnels before they decide to apply. A brave few will not even be able to visit until they set foot on campus as a freshman. While reading these blogs is a great alternative, it certainly cannot substitute for the real experience of being on MIT’s campus. So the story that follows is about my first visit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The context of my trip: New York City is a few hours away from MIT by road. My family has limited funds and no car, so I was very lucky to find out that my high school sponsors college trips for juniors. So I coughed up some cash and shuttled between nine different colleges in the Northeast over three days. At the time, I was fairly undecided in which colleges I wanted to apply to. All I wanted to do was get far away from home.

They told us they splash acid over the buildings to corrode them and make them look “older.” / THIS IS NOT MIT.

February 5th, 2005. My mind was still raving about the previous day, when I realized Yale’s campus was full of ugly old buildings (see above) and SO MUCH SLUSH. Now I was in the State of Massachusetts for the first time. A inch or two of snow still covered the ground. Our bus pulled up directly to 77 Massachusetts Avenue.

A giant staircase and columns!Admissions herded us into some classroom where we got the spiel. Then off to the tour!

We started in Lobby 7. Walking down the long hallway called the “Infinite Corridor” which comprises many of MIT’s classroom buildings, the first door to the right is a men’s bathroom. My friends Steven and Brendan asked if I could wait for them, so I kept watch on our tour as it quickly made its way down the hall. The group quickly became a meandering blob.

Five to ten minutes later, the boys came out of the bathroom. Where’s the tour?

I don’t know…

You were supposed to keep watch!

I WAS.

We walked around but found no one from our group. I wanted to cry. MIT seemed like a cool place and all but we’re *lost*! This was before I ever had a cell phone. Luckily, the boys used their cell phone networking magic to track down other people on the tour, and some long time later we rejoined the tour. Here are some random photos to prove it!

[]Part of West Campus, featuring the undergraduate dorms McCormick and Baker (left and right), with female graduate housing in the center that’s now undergraduate sorority housing.

This shot of a sculpture in Barker Library (that’s the main engineering library) looks very cool, though weird for a *library*..

[]Classic picture of the great dome from Killian Court.

Inside of one of the athletics buildings.That night we stayed at the Marriott Hotel on MIT’s campus. We were given some free time before our curfew at 11PM, so just for fun we went back to MIT! At the Student Center we bought candy and played video games. I showed off my pool and air hockey skills and we all had a great time.

My two guy friends who got lost in the bathroom are hard at work.So my visit happened to be awesome, although the more awesome bits happened outside the tour. All the while, I saw lots of random little things around campus that made me very happy and I suppose pushed me to apply. Here is my favorite picture from this whole weekend: