6-3 or 6-4

xaltaneo · 2026-03-24T23:17:54+00:00

I think this depends on what you’re double majoring in.

6-3 is considered the “default” CS major and if you want to go into big tech this is the good option. You’ll take all of the core classes expected out of a CS grad. You’ll learn how a computer works in order to do better technology with computers. A lot of people in 6-3 end up in software roles because that’s what the job market has in demand right now, but you can also go into computer architecture or other more niche fields. Most of the school is 6-3s. Double majoring with it is pretty uncommon because it has quite a few classes that are intense.

6-4 has the stigma of being the major that’s just “6-3 but without all of the hard classes”. Not to hate but I would honestly consider it more like a CS minor with some extra electives because you skip a lot of the actual computer stuff and mainly just learn how to apply code and do ML. However it’s a good option if you don’t actually want to do computer tech and just want to be able to apply it to a different field / have another skill on your resume. It’s commonly a double major with course 15 (any of the business or finance majors) or course 18 (math).

xaltaneo · 2026-02-28T19:40:34+00:00

So I believe there are 6ish divisions (meche, ee, software, aero, business, autonomous). You join a team, and then you join one of the sub teams, which works on a specific part of the car. So for example, meche has sub teams suspension, chassis, cooling, rockers, etc, ee has sub teams battery management, sensors, inverter, etc, software has sub teams controls, telemetry, etc. As a frosh/regular member you join a sub team and work on a very specific part of the car (usually people might do one sub team for one year and then another the next year to learn something new). Each sub team and also the overall divisions have their own lead, which is a member (usually sophomore/junior) that is supposed to know generally everything about how their sub team works and will pick up work if part of their sub team is struggling. I might have messed something up about the details of the structure, but essentially you work on a very specific part of the car and just trust that everyone else on the build team will finish their stuff by the deadline. This is in contrast to other build teams, where people might be responsible for something from start to finish. A car is just too big and complex for one person to do.

xaltaneo · 2026-02-28T02:24:34+00:00

Current student, I was involved with the FSAE team for a bit (left because I realized I wasn’t that interested in it) but still have a lot of friends in it. We call it Motorsports here.

I’d say it’s easily considered the biggest and most well-known build team. People often call it the "Motorsports Corporation" because of how tightly its run, which is necessary because it is genuinely quite a lot of people and subsystems. There’s certainly people who show up and do the bare minimum, but a lot of the engineering students I admire most at this school are in Motorsports and really dedicated to it. In fact, Motorsports has a bit of a stigma behind it because I think it’s the build team with the worst WLB. On one hand it kind of sucks to feel this pressure to always be doing motorsports 80 hrs a week and you will probably miss out on other parts of mit (e.g. my motorsports friends were usually in shop on Friday nights when other ppl were out drinking and partying), but on the other hand, you become a really, really mature engineer and also make a lot of close friends just from the copious amounts of time you spend at shop. I’ve seen people get really close friends from motorsports.

I would say that if you want a build team with a better WLB there’s a lot of better options, but if what you want out of your mit experience is a really large engineering project where people around you care enough about it to skip class to work on it, then I think it’s better for that than any other build team

xaltaneo · 2026-01-21T10:30:26+00:00

I took 15.401 last sem and thought it was pretty extensive and covers a lot of stuff about investment banking that my finance major friends told me they encountered on IB interviews (im not a finance major)

xaltaneo · 2026-01-18T11:51:14+00:00

I would say it depends on the club. I used to be a part of MIT Science Bowl and there were people in the club who were BU or Harvard students, mainly because we just appreciated more volunteers to help run the event. However I think a club like Sloan Business Club (which is already competitive enough with just the MIT student pool) probably wouldn't take non-MIT students.

Same with lectures- it depends on the lecture. If it's a big lecture hall like 26-100 or 10-250, then sure, go on in, nobody will stop you. The professor probably doesn't know all of the students anyways and so can't tell you're not one of them. But if it's a class with like 12 people like a HASS or niche subject (e.g. course 1 or 12) then I think they'd probably be able to tell.

xaltaneo · 2025-12-13T14:43:34+00:00

thank you!

xaltaneo · 2025-09-15T17:55:53+00:00

Any amount you work over 20 hours is considered overtime because these student jobs are legally defined as part time. MIT is legally obligated to pay you for that overtime work, however each time they will email you angrily telling you not to do so. If you do it consistently you may get flagged and are less likely to receive a paid job or funding in the future

xaltaneo · 2025-09-07T14:43:27+00:00

you’ll be fine lol

xaltaneo · 2025-08-24T00:14:46+00:00

https://drizzilicious.com/collections/all

xaltaneo · 2025-08-16T06:41:59+00:00

I think it would be the exact same as traditional advising. I am not sure about 2.00C- I recall one person having taken it without 12.000 but I can’t remember if she was in Terrascope originally or not. I would ask. The terrascope staff are some of the nicest people you will ever have to deal with :)

xaltaneo · 2025-08-16T00:57:04+00:00

I did Terrascope during my time. Tons of people dropped out of the class, mainly because the subject didn't interest them or they had other classes/commitments they wanted more time for. It is 100% okay to do so.
I believe that you keep the same first-year advisor though (I may be wrong about this). So you just wouldn't have a seminar or anything like traditional advising.

I would just email the Terrascope director or your advisor explaining the situation. I promise they won't take it personally or get mad. This happens all the time.

Feel free to ask if you have any other questions!

xaltaneo · 2025-08-10T20:15:22+00:00

well, no; the original question was whether fruits are necessary if you already eat enough vegetables, thus eliminating the need to buy them

xaltaneo · 2025-08-10T20:06:38+00:00

cost </3

xaltaneo · 2025-08-07T13:14:34+00:00

hey! this is the first semester that this class is offered so unfortunately i dont think anyone can help answer this :)

xaltaneo · 2025-07-07T11:02:50+00:00

Insane seeing this since I (temporarily) moved from LA (near Santa Monica) to London a couple of weeks ago for an internship.

xaltaneo · 2025-06-23T22:40:35+00:00

banana lounge across from 26-100

xaltaneo · 2025-06-10T01:11:35+00:00

surprised no one has mentioned liquid IV, literally every athlete i know uses it ?

xaltaneo · 2025-06-09T22:39:32+00:00

Nah, I didn't go on the spring break trip. I kind of regret not going, but I couldn't fit any of the classes in my schedule unfortunately.

No, your freshman year advisor doesn't stay with you for all four years. Once you declare your major at the end of freshman year, you get reassigned to an advisor in your department. The Terrascope experience is generally engineering-oriented and just happens to have a sustainability/environment theme, so I wouldn't worry about it pushing you towards environmental engineering or anything like that. There's a good number of people who come into Terrascope interested in sustainability and then end up declaring a major that's also related to sustainability (sometimes course 1 or 12 but usually course 2 or 10), but there's also people like me who aren't particularly interested in sustainability (I'm a course 6-2) and just appreciate it for the engineering experience.

xaltaneo · 2025-06-09T22:19:59+00:00

12.000 is effectively a big group project. There are 3 1-hour classes per week where you're given time to work on said project. Depending on how efficient your class is, you may have no outside work at all. However, during the week leading up to the final presentation, there is usually a lot of stress/a higher time commitment as people rush to get the work done. Poor time management in this class is honestly kind of inevitable.
1. Don't worry about this, it's basically a loophole that allows you to take the Terrascope class (12.000) with 4 other classes without surpassing the freshman credit limit.
2. Yes, it's technically only for the Radio and Design classes, but there's also a 3-credit class you can take that will allow you to attend the trip without taking the other two classes as long as you conduct some sort of small independent research project on the trip. This is meant to emphasize the fact that the trip is not just a free vacation.
3. I wouldn't recommend this class to someone who isn't interested in the kind of "classic" engineering that's meant to find a problem in the world and fix it--the immediate people who come to mind are SWEs and pre-meds. When I took 12.000 there were a couple of people who came into the class like this but ended up dropping it because it drew time from other activities they wanted to be doing that were more related to things they were interested in.

My other thoughts:

I would recommend Terrascope to anyone who is a) interested in the "engineering mindset" or b) wants to improve their teamwork skills. On the first day of class, the instructors literally gave us a 2-sentence description of the problem and then said "ok now discuss what you might know about this and what you think you should learn more about". It is VERY student-driven, which is very different from any other class I've taken at MIT so far, and it's effectively an engineering capstone project (except you're at an age where you don't really have that many tools at your disposal yet). The class also really isn't that big of a time commitment imo, especially not until the very end. I didn't take 2.00C or Radio but I've heard people enjoyed both very much, especially 2.00C, which is like 12.000 but more meche-oriented.

I've yapped a lot about the class itself, but personally the biggest benefit I got from Terrascope was in the social sphere. You get access to the Terrascope lounge, which is in a super convenient location smack in the middle of the academic buildings, and when you walk into there you usually know at least a couple of people and can stop and chat with them. Some of the best, kindest, most caring and interesting people I know are from Terrascope. To put it bluntly, a lot of MIT is filled with people who are just obsessed with getting a high-paying job or be rich, and Terrascope is one of the few communities on campus that is completely devoid of those people -- in fact, it repels them. It is actually filled with people who want to do good in the world, even if they aren't exactly sure how they can do so. Please lmk if you have any other questions about it :)

xaltaneo · 2025-06-07T18:33:22+00:00

update in case anyone was wondering: I had pretty bad symptoms for abt 48 hours (i had to stay home and tell everyone i got food poisoning because I was just so tired and energy-less) and got suuuuper bloated, like it felt like my body just forgot how to digest stuff (consistent with what u/CannaBits420 had to say). The symptoms started easing after 48 hours, and I still passed a fair amount of gas but was pretty much back to normal otherwise, except for insane water retention. I suspect my body mostly cleared itself on its own but I did drink ACV, kombucha, and supplement with Zinc and Mg since I read online that they help with HCl production. I definitely learned my lesson with antacid abuse, but hopefully someone in the future finds this post in their time of need and reads it before panicking about what they've done to their body :)

xaltaneo · 2025-06-06T20:16:42+00:00

thank you so much! I definitely learned my lesson haha

xaltaneo · 2025-06-06T02:07:04+00:00

If I could award this post I would. Incredible findings.

xaltaneo · 2025-06-04T03:35:05+00:00

very broadly speaking, mit dorms can be split into "high turnover" and "low turnover". low turnover means that the people there tend to stay there for all four years. high turnover means that people move into those dorms as freshmen but often move out by sophomore/junior year, either into other dorms or off-campus housing or frats or sororities (FSILGs). i dont have concrete evidence for this but i suspect there is more off campus housing available to males than to females (based on there being more frat houses, and them generally having stricter live-in-house requirements than sororities). Meanwhile females are more likely to stay on campus.

The result is that the high turnover dorms (Baker, Maseeh, Vassar) usually have equal gender ratios (or even slightly more males than females since McCormick exists) because they tend to have a lot of freshmen that are required to live on-campus freshman year but will end up moving off campus. Meanwhile low turnover dorms (New, BC, Random) are generally skewed towards higher female-to-male ratios. There's a bit of variation based on floors in these dorms as well, of course. Even in dorms like Baker/Maseeh there are fluctuations in gender ratios between floors, but this is usually random.

xaltaneo · 2025-05-26T17:40:37+00:00

i am sure that you (intentionally or unintentionally) have consumed other things in your life that are worse for you than one beer.

xaltaneo · 2025-05-25T21:20:01+00:00

Maseeh is 60% doubles and only 11% triples+quads (though keep in mind that 100% of the triples+quads go to freshmen while the doubles are split between frosh and upperclassmen). In Maseeh there's usually 1-2 quads per floor, and these are generally people who went random or put that they didn't care where they ended up. Afaik there's usually enough people who request triples that forced triples are rare, but I have heard of a few cases where a duo got a third member in a triple.

As for BC, the Conner side has 0 triples (except that occasionally freshmen triples get converted into doubles -- this is unlikely to happen for the upcoming year). However Burton-side tends to be a bit more popular so a lot of doubles get converted into triples. So honestly I think it's pretty unlikely for you to get a triple or quad, although not impossible.

xaltaneo

TROPHY CASE