Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion School Secrets: 5 things to know about MIT

I hung around MIT quite a bit as a freshman (I attended another college in Massachusetts and a friend in my dorm had friends from high school there).

It's not that you "can't fail" at MIT. I knew a couple people who washed out. It happens.

I think that the journalist did MIT an injustice by writing "can't fail," because it's not true. Statements like that feed misconceptions like "The hardest part of MIT (or Harvard) is getting in. Once you get in, they'll never fail you."

The thing is that the people who run MIT know how demanding the place is, and they also understand how difficult the first year there can be. So they try to ease the transition with policies like their first semester P/F policy.

Obviously, selective colleges want their students to succeed. It's good for the students and it feeds US News rankings. But (at least when I was there and then ten-ish years later when a neighbor's daughter flunked out) if someone fails, MIT will give them the boot. Perhaps things have changed, but it seems to me that passing too many people who should have failed will drag down the institutional reputation.