MIT vs. Cambridge Systems

I've ragged on Cam quite a bit in some of these posts. It seems, even after a year of being here and seeing some perks of this university, that I still heavily lean in favor of MIT. I've tried to make objective comparisons and diminish the effect of my biases on these observations. But here let me explain the root of the favoritism.


It's not that Cambridge is a bad university. It's not that, as an institution of learning, MIT >> Cambridge. They just approach education very differently. While the English/European system hammers home the focus on your single discipline/major, pushing students to definitively choose their course before even applying to university, the American system views the undergraduate experience as only part-classroom-learning and a hell-of-a-lot-of-outside-the-classroom-learning-experiences. The Cambridge/Oxford systems hold an overall similarity with the Chinese university system in that these institutes are extremely academic. People don't care so much for seriously exploring interests, hobbies, or passions completely unrelated to their studies - there are a lot fewer "just for fun/just because .. why not?" sort of activities available (or taken up by students) at Cam, and most of the time outside the library or lecture room is spent going to guest-speaker lectures or political debates at The Union (imagine if Kresge held debates with invited speakers all the time). It would be a lot less likely to, without much of a conscious decision to do so, pick up a sport you've never played before, join Dance Troupe just because you want to try something new, or stumble into joining an a cappella group and wind up seriously dedicating yourself to these activities that have nothing to do with your coursework. There's a lot smaller chance for discovering new and perhaps so-far dormant passions, and a lot more you're-only-going-to-do-things-laid-out-on-your-exactly-planned-college-track. Sure, some people may perceive extracurricular pursuits as 'a waste of time' since college 'should be about learning your subject' - but we'll get to that point later*.

MIT's method of teaching is "learn by doing."
Cambridge's method of teaching is "learn by writing about it."

Seriously. I'm doing my best to be unbiased, and those statements come from the collective experience of a large sample set, not just mine.

MIT stresses application, whereas Cambridge stresses theory.

As with the International Baccalaureate program (in high school), Cambridge's method of teach-and-examine is: teach, teach, teach. Talk, talk, talk. Think, think, think. Write, write write. Then, at the very end of the year, compiled all your year's worth of knowledge and prove yourself on a final exam. It's a lot of self-planned study, revision that the student must themselves pace out, and basically, "here's all the material. learn it. we're testing you in May." With MIT, the method of teach-and-examine is: teach, teach, teach. Do, do, do. Apply, apply, apply. Lab, lab, lab. Pset, pset, pset/exam, exam, exam. Continual assessment creates constant and continual stress, is way extremely more stressful, but you're constantly being tested on what you know/don't know, and getting wake-up calls in the form of checkpoints - with each exam, the student is forced to prepare and at least be on par with the curriculum so far. The stress at MIT may be immensely more and thousand-times more intense, but at Cambridge, you could fall behind to god-knows-where before you realize you're that far behind. In a way, this may get the student to learn the invaluable lesson of time management that they somehow bypassed before uni, or, as is the case with some freshers, it could result in them practically wasting their entire first year here. (But don't worry, even if you fell waaay behind during the first 2 trimesters, you get AN ENTIRE FIVE WEEKS of vacation right before exam term to catch up. Oh, plus like, extra weeks once term starts and classes stop.)

Honestly, I realized what makes me so biased against the Cambridge system. It's that the set up, curriculum, schedules, and methods make Cambridge undergraduate university much like a graduate school, and at this point in my life, I don't want that. I want an undergraduate college experience. Additionally, I'm an engineer - not an academic who wants to read textbooks until I know enough to become a university professor. I want to apply my knowledge, not simply be a bookie. For those of you who enjoy the lone-researcher-don't-bother-me just-let-me-sit-here-and-pore-over-these-books-every-day style, Cambridge would probably fare better for you than the constant DOING of MIT. It's more relaxed, self-managed time here, with a lot of flexibility of when/where to do your work, as long as you produce a year's worth of evidence ... at the end of the year. For me -- I enjoy being constantly busy, juggling development-lab, robot-design-class, lathe-making class, finance class, music class, psychology research, a cappella rehearsals, athletics practice, event-planning committee work, dinner out with friends, and spontaneous most-random-stuff-ever with people at the same time, with little to no flexibility because you can't add extra hours to the day. I love running on 150% intensity all the time and being so bogged down with work/activities that I have negative time to sleep. (Acceleration trap? Ok ... maybe that does exist, but the fall out doesn't happen until the semester's over. Then we all die. But it's worth it.)

*For me, those are the things that the undergraduate experience is about. I have the rest of my life to go to grad school, work toward a PhD (never), and conduct calm, quiet, studious, narrowly defined, focused research. But. At this point, we are only 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old. We have just finished high school, which we finish at age 17. You know, when you're still living at home with your family taking care of you and blah blah blah. College -- you're out on your own, and there's a lot to learn. And not just about topics taught in the classroom. This is the prime time in our life. The undergraduate experience in America is about exploration, discovery, passion, imagination, and creativity. It's about learning more from your peers than from your lecturers. It's about figuring out things about yourself, your dreams, your life, your social self, your academic self, your financial self. We have the rest of our lives to narrow our social group to the small group of lab partners, or the few coworkers at the office, and do research about a new HIV vaccine or develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool ... but there are some things we might never discover about ourselves if we're never given the chance. Personally, I value the chance to open every door and take a stroll into several rooms, ultimately choosing my final door and having an enriched rest-of-life due to the various experiences .. over heading down the hallway, not bothering to dip into any rooms along the way, blindly and determinedly fast-walking to 'my final door.' Sure, I'd get there faster that way .. but the journey itself would lack most of the enrichment it would've had otherwise.

The scope and opportunities in high school are limited by virtue of economies of scale, but in college - and especially somewhere extremely diverse and supportive of its students - there are so many opportunities for anything and everything you have ever wanted to do, it will blow your mind. Glass-blowing lab? Chocolate-truffle-making lab? Wine tasting class? Square dance lessons? Researching fuel and materials for nuclear energy systems with world-renowned scientists? Flying 2500 miles away and touring California with your a cappella group, performing at schools and plazas along the coast? Yes, of course my academics are important to me. Yes, I'm getting a world class education from my professors. But these types of opportunities -- these, I will no longer have at my beck and call, all free (funded by the university), once I finish undergraduate. These aren't things I must do, and certainly things I wouldn't seek out voluntarily, but the fact that these opportunities are offered and encouraged to me throughout my early 20s allows me to explore things in a scope 100x bigger than I'd ever imagined. For that, my undergraduate college experience is absolutely irreplaceable for me. And I surely don't want to have that replaced by 4 years of premature grad school.