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I was at MIT during her reign as dean of admissions (I dropped out about a year or so into it). She was actually rather offensive, claiming that the generation after me cared more about fitting in than academics, and she did a pretty good job of skewering the extracurricular activities which were one of the major defining parts of MIT (at least for undergraduates).

Actually, I have nothing good to say about MIT's administration above the individual professors and departments -- they spent huge amounts of money on pointless things, and mainly consisted of professional administrators (educated at e.g. BU) vs. alumni. During my time at MIT they destroyed the FSILG system (student-managed small housing groups) due to one fucknozzle drinking himself to death next door to my residence.

I haven't kept up with MIT since around 2000, but it was definitely on a downward trend from 1996-1999, surviving mainly on past reputation.

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Yeah, I chose MIT because I wanted to get my ass kicked, which didn't happen so much. It's still possible, but it seems that they've been watering down everything. They banned triple majoring, and I think they've even stopped granting dual degrees now.

The administration has always seemed pathologically risk-averse, and mostly come from the wrong sort of background to run the type of school MIT should be.

It's still not a bad place, but I think I could put together a far superior program, attached to another research university (to have access to grad students), to educate undergrads for $15-20k/yr (vs. the $60k/yr MIT claims to be spending). Take risks!

I think something like KAUST (in Saudi) could end up being what MIT should be -- or Olin (the free school which has lots of MIT SM/PhD instructors).

If I had kids, I'd probably push toward an undergrad-focused school like Reed for pure science education, or Stanford or UC Berkeley for someone who wanted to be an engineer, just to have access to the silicon valley ecosystem. I think there is a strong case for "take 1-2 years between HS and college to work", too.

Yeah, I agree, I still enjoyed it, met a lot of great people, and (I think) got a good education. Just meant to agree that the administration seems to be almost more of a hinderance than a help to those things.

Olin isn't free anymore.

http://olin.edu/admission/costs.asp