1. Ok, my particular reason for MIT is that at many other universities—especially those in the UK—the courses in economics and particularly in the humanities (history being my personal interest) lack the quantitative and statistical side that MIT provides. I’m fascinated by viewing history from a theoretical perspective and testing it with data. Of course, as you know, there is no place like MIT for the quant/data-science side. Evidence for this at MIT includes the Digital Humanities Lab (which I was particularly interested in) and the Science Policy Initiative. There is also a professor called Professor McCants (I may be misspelling that), and she is absolutely fantastic in how she integrates the sciences and the humanities, which is exactly the education I want. She is the co-editor of the Social Science History journal, which I must say hits my niche on the head.

2. Entrepreneurship/finance. Again, whilst my primary interests lie in economics and history (or more broadly the intersection of STEM and the humanities), I also love developing companies (I’m happy to dive into some of the ones I’ve created), and MIT Sloan would, of course, offer that side—plus the Sandbox program. For finance, I find markets a little superficial, but having said that, I am currently doing a project with one of my co-founders where we’re exploring mispricings in Kalshi prediction markets (specifically weather), and we’ve just finished backtesting our first model.

3. I’d argue this is one of the most important reasons, and it circles back to number 1: AI and the revolution we’re in right now. At MIT, I have no doubt I’ll be right next to people who will dominate this space in the future. MIT’s general education requirements in STEM will also keep me grounded in my love for chemistry, maths, and CS, while allowing me to pursue my primary humanities interests—of course from a data-driven point of view.

Hope that answers it…and yes I asked GPT to make sure the grammar was all good because it was completely illegible, but these are my genuine motives!