what we mean when we say the people by CJ Q. '23

Ask MIT students what they like about MIT, and many of them will say “the people”. What do we mean by this? I ask around.

who

who are “the people at mit”? i think it’s mostly undergrads, people in related friend groups + orgs, etc. rather than the student body as a whole or grad students / workers / etc

i promise you that if an undergrad student uses “the people” of mit, they are only referring to undergrad students, and maybe some well-liked faculty or non-teaching staff or young grad student friends, but not dining hall workers, nor maintenance workers, or PhD students. i don’t think this is necessarily a good thing but it would be insincere not to say this is somewhat true.

I think what is meant by most individuals when they are asked the question of what they like about MIT and subsequently answer, “the people” is, “the people whom I consider my friends or tribe.” I think it’s dishonest to say that everyone at MIT likes everyone, but this doesn’t need to be true nor is MIT benefited from it potentially being true.

What makes the people so good at MIT is that every person, whether they’re student, faculty, or staff, can make the choice to associate with whomever they want from the diverse strata of interests, personalities, and backgrounds that MIT offers. One can argue that the people as a whole at MIT are more willing to step outside their comfortable niches to associate with those different from themselves, but this trait is really only possible because there are so many different kinds of people here.

i guess i would answer differently in theory because what i like is my personal community that i found. and yes i do think i could form this anywhere. but this one already existed, and now i’m part of it. probably similar to the way people feel comradery with others of their frat even if they haven’t met before. i don’t know. i wonder about this often too.

caveats

the mit i knew before i arrived on campus was one composed through admissions blogs, quirky anecdotes, and urban legend (have you heard of the mit-harvard pigeon pavlov hack? that one’s my favorite). the mit i now know is a world much more grounded in facticity, but for every dashed bit of romanticism i find a more striking reality.

there are no traits that are unique to MIT, but the extreme variety and blending of traits makes MIT really special

i actually think most of the things we like about MIT people are true at most places, but because everyone thinks it’s an “MIT thing” it’s easier for us to notice this in other people + people are more open in some ways and more willing to foster community easily & everywhere. some people will say that MIT people are just super motivated & hard-working & passionate. maybe that’s true, but the people i enjoy are passionate about things that aren’t academic, and this happens everywhere.

to the people that say “theyre not like people their age that like to get drunk every weekend” they have this adolescent fantasy that escaping their environment will vindicate a fledgling understanding of the world by othering actual humans based on their perceived intelligence usually by strawmaning people they are estranged to. but I dont doubt that people just like having a pool of similar enough peers that will at the very least be not that shitty via the admissions process. Especially escaping former hardship, the irony is that the former group just becomes bullies themselves.

As a prefrosh “the people” was definitely part of my decision but as someone who’s about to graduate I don’t think MIT people are more worth being around than people from other schools.

smart

technically passionate

respect for competence

super smart and talented ofc.

Raw talent

I’d be referring to the way that people around me inspire me with how they’ve learned and done so much while being the same age as me.

deeply curious

curious, hold you intellectually accountable, new perspectives

innovative, creative, weird, interdisciplinary, multidimensional

i didn’t know smart came in so many shapes and colors until after meeting people here.

maybe too much emphasis on intelligence over kindness in general. i’m not sure

way too much emphasize on being smart + funny in conversations / social interactions. this shows up in conversations, mit confessions comments, piazza, etc. where you get people making snarky replies that are honestly pretty rude and wouldn’t be acceptable elsewhere but they get lots of upvotes or support because they’re smart and funny and stuff. i think it originates largely from kids here valuing intelligence and/or being insecure and wanting to demonstrate their intelligence when interacting with people

intense

the more time i spend here, the more i understand why our mascot is the beaver — everyone here is so incredibly hard-working and curious. after all, i’m typing this up past midnight in hayden and more than half the seats here are still occupied. like it or not, we got here by being tryhards, and we’ll continue trying hard. i like the fact that there’s this mentality to strive for the best, but at the same time, the spirit goes that collaboration beats competition. and so we pset together, we laugh together, we cry together — we learn together, and we grow up together.

hardest working hardest playing people ive ever found

have similar interest and personality like mine ( like board games/kpop/asian stuff(boba)), do homework ontime, hardworking and little partying.

hardworking / motivated (compared to the avg person), have communities they’re involved in and care about

Passionate about what they like/do

How passionate everyone is about their niche and how open they are to sharing their passions.

uniquely mit traits: go deep/intense on projects (+), too overwhelmed/busy to care about others (-)

people don’t know how to commit to things and don’t understand signing up for too many things means doing all of them badly (after a certain point) and stressing other people out. i’ve started sending my friends hell yeah or no when i get annoyed at them overcommitting

people are much more focused on their work than on their friendships; some such people are very boring socially.

intellectual masochism

extremely passionate and motivated, most likely grinding on something they care a lot about, really internally motivated to do good and work hard

Typically I mean that people here have this incredible tenacity for the things they do, meaning they will be hardworking, passionate, and talented in their academic pursuits, but also creative/social/sporty outlets. I think the people here are uniquely multifaceted. You’ll meet people who are simultaneously balancing killing the game and winning awards in research AND producing high quality art or being president or captain of whatever. They take their academics but also their leisure very seriously (see building rollercoasters), and very often take being your friend very seriously. If someone here loves you, they show up & support you with the same (if not more) effort they put into their other passions. tl;dr: of course people here don’t have totally unique characteristics, we’re just more hardcore about /everything/, including being really kind, lovely, creative people

interested

Obviously this is not true for everyone, but speaking generally, MIT people, compared to people I met at other universities, are more passionate about their interests and have a wider range of interests (both in any one person and across people as a whole)

i feel like part of it might be hiveminding, but i do feel like (1) people do seem to care more about life enjoyment than The Future TM, and (2) the things people do for this life enjoyment are more varied and include less formal/more silly things

Being unabashedly unafraid to have our own interests (no matter how quirky or mainstream they may be). The passion for these interests spark joy and shine brightly–despite the dark hellish academic pressure that mit classes can place on us in tandem with the hard struggles that can come with persevering through the other social/emotional aspects of college (#growingpains)

I feel like MIT students are uniquely passionate about things and don’t really care if other people judge them for it. I think this is apparent by the plethora of relatively niche interest clubs

will be interested in any niche topic you have to talk about

MIT also has a lot of unique or really cool clubs that you don’t see everywhere, i.e. spinning arts, assassins guild, esf, model train, ADT, and all the makerspace clubs like solar car.

everyone wants to talk to you, everyone has a passion that they love talking about. if I go to next house for example there will be upperclassmen who just talk to me about anything, ask about my day, are friendly, help out if you need. nobody is toxic or sabotaging

well I’ve never been anywhere else for college so I don’t know, but I think being open about discussing interests. I’ll be talking to my friends and the next thing I know, my friend is explaining some advanced course 6 hardware stuff. At the end, I’ve learned a bit, and I can tell they’re really passionate about what they’re talking about.

smaller proportion of people who do their major for career prospects or are otherwise very career-oriented people

a place where the vast majority of people have very specific, borderline-obsessive, shameless, deep interests

Feeling like we all share some kind of passion for academics, even if it’s not the same passion; I enjoy being able to grab dinner with a group of people and learn about a new topic from someone or have in-depth debates over random ideas

common stem interests → easier to talk to / get to know

we’re analyzing a film in literature and existentialism class, and someone brings up an analogy of people as a disarray of drifting particles. grins light up our faces as we eagerly dive into metaphysical physics metaphors — we see electric fields in sartre’s look, infinity in camus’ sisyphus, and recurring references to internships, psets, and ihtfp. we synthesize our technical terms into frameworks for parsing the world — and while anyone can throw around these amalgamations of science and philosophy, there has never been a world where you can easily feel so understood.

proactive

people are here to do things to change the world and advance technology for the better, people are here to do research

The administration, faculty, and staff give students a ton of freedom to do whatever they want (choose your dorm, 24/7 access to incredible machine shops, etc). This is especially amazing when combined with how skilled MIT students are. My friends, who happen to be robotics kids like me, helped me build a robot for fun (over several months). I don’t think that would’ve happened if I went to another university (my friends either wouldn’t have the skills and/or wouldn’t be willing to put in a ton of time for someone else’s passion project).

The people here are super passionate about their projects and what they do. A lot of people take initiative to pursue these passions, and their finished results are very cool. The “Unique to MIT” part is that a lot of these projects largely involve makerspaces and like making something physically cool.

i think that mit encourages creation. it is the mother of makerspaces, the home to hundreds of assorted student groups, the kind of place where people build motorcycles in their hall bathroom — but above all, it is a haven for the act of making things happen. and the people here, with their brilliant minds, will take this call to action to heart and work miracles. that is, when we’re not drowning in psets and the infinite grind of one week syllabus, two weeks class, ten weeks midterms, two weeks finals. there is just so much potential walking around mit, but at the same time, we often lose those projects to the minutes that slip through our fingers. and yet that is the puzzle of mit — to be at an epicenter of innovation, and know that what we make of it is exactly what we make out of it. so we struggle onwards, boats borne back ceaselessly, but it is in this shared struggle that we understand each other. you say ihtfp and i like that i know exactly what you mean.

mit is special because if you want to build a rollercoaster, you can, as long as you get permission to use a space, make sure you build it up to code, and follow all the relevant osha regulations. most places just wouldn’t trust you with that kind of responsibility and wouldn’t give you a space at all. creative people are everywhere, but they shine a lot brighter when they’re in a place where they’re allowed to express themselves.

collaborative

people are genuinely encouraging and non competitive.

Collaborative. This is vaguely my tour guide stock answer, but i do also believe it. Mostly bc people keep asking me if it’s like [insert ivy-like college here] where everyone’s competing for A’s all the time and i get to say no, actually, people are generally willing to Help with classwork and such. It’s not fully unique, but it does set us apart from a few specific colleges l o l

collaboration rather than competitiveness (usually)

MIT students, despite the nature of the school, are not cut throat or competitive with others, rather everyone is focused on bettering themselves and achieving their goals.

the culture of (legal) pset collaboration and acceptance of the struggleTM is passed down from generations of upperclassmen to lowerclassmen and encouraged by teaching staffs foster good vibes<3

I think really strong pset groups – I don’t think this is normal elsewhere? Having a group you can work together with and making sure everyone succeeds, not just competing against each other.

people at MIT are very collaborative and supportive (as opposed to competitive). Upperclassmen will spend hours teaching me how to use the HASS or TIG weld or do FEA. Legendary alumni come to help out at events and give really good advice and talks.

The way that everyone here wants each other to succeed. There’s no competition of “I have to be the best, so you have to fail” or anything like that. Everyone wants everyone else to succeed, together. I think that collaborative attitude is pretty central to the MIT experience and identity, in a way that’s pretty unique.

helpful

welcoming and supportive, making time for others

if you’re struggling in a class, the people who help you out are never pretentious about it, and if you’re helping someone who’s struggling you do everything in your power to help them understand. we care about eachother in deep, familial ways.

more willing to help others who are struggling

(Specific) People’s faces pop up in my head, and I think of how they were by my side, or how we were together, during specifically wonderful or terrible events – some things as small as failing a test or going out to boba on a sunny day, and as big as figuring out family emergencies or winning some award or getting some offer. In addition (and in a more convoluted way) – I think of the people with whom I have formed such a wonderful bond with that I will be willingly next to their side during hardships almost unconditionally. I don’t think this is completely unique to MIT.

people are always there for you whenever you need help, people are there to listen to you rant, people are here to collaborate with you

the people know a lot and are very willing to teach you what they know

Whatever it is you want to do at MIT, there’s someone here who will help you do it. Whether you want to loft your bed, build a startup, or just like, pass your classes, it’s almost guaranteed that the people around you will help you achieve that goal.

open

i think something uniquely mit is the imposter syndrome that comes with the name, so my friends and i all think we just kinda lucked out on getting in and have been struggling ever since

mit people are genuine — no duck syndrome here! — and care about each other.

One thing I do thing is uniquely MIT is being open about how were all struggling. I’ve heard about Stanford ducks, where they’re paddling and paddling to just try to make it seem like they’re just gliding along. Here we’re pretty open about how were doing, with one group I’m in giving everyone two free mental health days to use at any point in the semester. If you use one, people may reach out to make sure you’re okay, but no one judges you for it. MIT is hard and we’re all struggling together,. This is why I like that MIT has no honors, no cum laude. It’s just your degree, and we’ll all get the same degree. You may have two minors and two majors while I have just one major, but we’re still getting the same degree with no extra distinctions.

The people here are very chill and fun to talk to. There is a sense of transparency as no one really pretends to have their whole life together, and I think this makes it easier to talk to people compared to people at other colleges.

we were all stupid enough to go here

One other trait of MIT that I don’t think we normally get from other universities is how up front and genuine people are. With a few exceptions, people in general say what they mean. This is not necessarily always a great thing (some people do lack social skills and that does contribute to some disutility), but I’m not so constantly worrying that people are plotting something against me behind my back, like I had to in middle school.

weird

they’re kinda weird but in a good way

quirky and eccentric, or accepting of others’ quirks and eccentricities

People here aren’t afraid to be nerdy, and as a fellow nerd, this is cool. I’ve heard that MIT is unique in its vibrant but nerdy community; dormspam is something unique to MIT and kinda creates a sense of a united campus.

quirkiness, niche communities, strong identities as members of student groups and living groups

larger proportion of non-heteronormative or ND people

I mean this respectfully and this is backed up by data and I self identify like this: the people at mit are often hyperfixators, who can easily find something to obsess over and delve into that for hours. I think that’s one of the things that makes MIT so special. I think without that touch of neurodivergent compulsion to obsess over things there wouldn’t be as much passion and our extracurricular wouldn’t be so special

conversations that can flip at a moment’s notice between thought-provoking/intellectual and completely idiotic

way more people here than average are interesting — genuine, true to themselves, quirky, kind of weird in a good way

we speak in numbers, i like to tell the tour groups. “tell an mit student that to meet them at 3 in building 3 for 3.003 in course 3, and they’ll know that means to meet them at 3 pm in the maclaurin buildings for principles of engineering practice in the materials science major.” and of course that isn’t true for most mass techers, at least not fully — but sit around in a lounge, walk the infinite, or wander through a library and you’ll hear all these numbers that our minds automatically translate. these shared simulacrums are not what make us mit students, or what brings us here, but during our time together they bind us with a strange colloquial power. “you taught me a secret language / i can’t share with anyone else,” taylor sings.

pasta

two things that come to mind recently are “We appreciate having a 21 year old milk at Random” or “We fill Hayden on a Saturday afternoon”

People here aren’t afraid to be nerdy, and as a fellow nerd, this is cool. I’ve heard that MIT is unique in its vibrant but nerdy community; dormspam is something unique to MIT and kinda creates a sense of a united campus.

like me

It’s pretty easy to guess, but I’m autistic. I’ve been told by multiple MIT students and faculty that for whatever reason, there’s a somewhat higher-than-average neurodivergent population at MIT than in the wider world. Judging by the people here, I’d totally buy that, and I’ve found more acceptance and belonging here because of that than I would have elsewhere. I truly have found my “people.”

When I say “the people” I mean east side culture. As a queer neurodivergent person, being in a place where people are unopologetically neurodivergent and queer is amazing. It feels so great to unmask and be myself without others thinking I’m weird.

MIT people are people I see myself in. Sure, by coming to MIT, I have surrounded myself with people who share my ambition. But even more than that, in the presence of “MIT people” I find solidarity and acceptance from those who are just like me (and from plenty of people here who aren’t like me, but who accept me just the same). I’ve found friends here who accept that sometimes I need breaks from sensory-intensive situations, and understand that I occasionally can’t put my thoughts into words. Even something as small as geeking out over a super specific and niche interest makes me feel like I truly belong here.

Also meeting people who are super similar to me, which is not common at all in places outside of MIT (similar in terms of academic interests, tendency for spontaneity, and open-mindedness).

I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but I found it much easier to get along with people here than I did with people in high school. This might have been fostered by a culture of collaboration instead of competition, but people don’t seem to be out to get you as much as people were in high school. There are a wider variety of people, so I am able to find many different outlets to express many different aspects of myself.

maybe it’s just hard for me to get along with “normal people” (sampled uniformly from usa, eg. my high school) so i appreciate being able to get along with a lot of people here

chill

generally easy to talk to, non-judgemental, and always have something new or interesting to share

most people (that i like) are down to hang out

~the vibe~

the majority of people are so chill and so humble. you’re playing slap cup at a party, and then get into a conversation with their person next to you and find out that they’re some national champion in something, and you’d never know it.

(Most) MIT students are very humble and helpful despite how awe-inspiring they are and the amazing things they have done.

we respect each other and recognize that everyone has something worthwhile to contribute: we take things seriously and never try to build ourselves up by putting other people down.

we all recognize that there’s someone out there who’s smarter than us

accepting

when i talk about the people, i think what i’m really talking about is the way mit culture really encourages people to exist. i think a lot of other colleges tend to stifle social freedom and expression because they’re scared of liability and backlash, which creates a very restrained culture. mit’s culture encourages people to be themselves, be loud and proud, express themselves and enjoy life, all that jazz. like the old stereotypes about liberal arts colleges, funnily enough.

i think this kind of culture is very self-reinforcing, because it attracts other unique, creative people who want to be able to express themselves too. i think this kind of culture is the natural state of human beings, especially college kids who are growing up and creating their identities for the first time, and the only reason it doesn’t exist everywhere is that there are people in power who intentionally suppress it. inhibited, droning normalcy is boring, safe, and makes sure an institution has less legal liability.

more kind to outsiders and accepting of differences

there seems to be very little barrier to interactions or social circles between years and departments/courses (i.e., social interaction is not entirely academics-driven)

orgs that i really like being a part of include ohms, lsc, web.lab, esp (back when i was active), all of which are oriented around trying to create really good experiences in various forms, and which are pretty welcoming and inclusive and low-prestige. last point is important eg lsc is just a bunch of people showing movies so there is literally 0 clout + nobody takes it seriously hence you get a lot of people who just really enjoy movies and being part of the club. OTOH there are a lot of clouty and less inclusive orgs like poker club, hmmt, etc. some of which i’ve tried getting involved in and really disliked. when i say i like that people have communities they care about i’m mostly referring to the former kind; the latter attracts a lot of people that i mostly stay away from

to me, the people at MIT are very willing. i wouldn’t say inherently more creative or more nice than people elsewhere. something i appreciate about MIT is when i have a thought that feels silly or strange, one i might not voice at other places for fear of being called nerdy or eccentric, i can say it here and people actually think it through and respond to it. there is a willingness to engage with odd, out there, weird ideas

we’re lying on the carpet at 5 am, the weight of the world slipping out our lips and into the night. someone plays a taylor swift song and semi-strangers stop by to sing along. a sheesh scurries along, but no one really bats an eye. there is comfort here.

the way we interact – many of us come from backgrounds where you are the only one in the room who would understand a nerdy joke, or think about certain deep topics, etc,. At MIT, I have felt (mostly) utmost comfort to talk about those things to at least a few people, and that is a part of what makes MIT so special for me.