I was looking at the catalog and I noticed it went right from 22 (Nuclear Science) to 24 (Linguistics and Philosophy). Was there ever a Course 23? If so what was it?

Ever since being admitted to MIT, I have been lurking around various related message boards, and it seems there exists a common refrain that (due to the pass / no credit nature of first semester) one should not be afraid to take challenging classes and explore new things the first semester at MIT. This prospect is especially exciting to me, and I was wondering if there are any classes the good people of reddit deem to be extremely exciting / necessary / challenging to take freshman year.

For reference I am considering a major in mathematics (taken up to Complex Analysis) or biology (only formally taken AP Bio), and a minor in business, engineering, or CS (no real formal education in any of the three).

I am pretty flexible in what I want to take, and am really just looking to maximize the fun and knowledge gained in my freshman year. Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

Edit: I don't want to come across as overconfident. I simply wish to utilize the first semester to learn my limits and see which subjects I am best in. Of course, I am keeping open the possibility of dropping courses.

It feels like everyone is doubling with 18 + something else. I am honestly only interested in math/stats, so 18 applied feels like the natural course. Not as interested in CS theory, so I don't think 18C is the right choice for me. It feels like no one is a single major in math, though, unless they want to go into academia? While I'm not sure what I want to do, I don't want to limit my options. Some things I have been considering are academia in operations research or applied math, quant trading/research (ew, I know), and data science.

I was planning my courseroad when I stumbled on Course XX's course flowchart: https://be.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/BESBFlowchart.pdf

I need to take 20.110 by sophomore year to graduate on time. 20.110 is only offered in the fall, which means I must take it by sophomore fall. But it has Chemistry (GIR) as a prereq, which means I must take Chemistry freshman spring (since I took 8.022 and 7.012 in the fall).

Is this really true? Are there really no Course 20s who got chemistry credit after freshman year?

Also, is it a better idea to take 5.111 over 3.091 if I want to go into 20? I've heard that 5.111 is very, very atomic-level, so I doubt I would be applying any of its principles as a bioengineer, but I just want to make sure.

Hey everyone 👋

We’re a small group of about ~10 people interested in learning AI and deep learning together, and we’ve just started going through the MIT Introduction to Deep Learning (6.S191) by Alexander Amini course (freely available on Youtube).

How we’re doing it:

• One lecture per week

• Focus on both theory and PyTorch implementation

• During the week:

  • Ask questions and discuss concepts

  • Share useful resources

  • Suggest small experiments or coding tasks related to the lecture

Weekly meetup:

• Every Sunday

• We go through the lecture together, discuss key ideas, and help each other out

We’ve just started, so it’s a perfect time to join. Our first group discussion (for Lecture 1) will be next Sunday.

If you’re interested in joining the study group and learning deep learning in a collaborative way, feel free to comment below or DM me and I’ll add you to the group.

I have been refered to the mit coursed to be one of the best options out there. I am still a newbie, so I am still to fresh to check into this stuff. Looking for the courses and classes I saw like 3 or 4 different pages with courses from MIT, which ones are the important ones? are there "fake courses". Thank you

Hey everyone! I'm a co2028 admit and I'm pretty deadset on attending mit, but have a couple of things I'm curious about before finally committing :)

I'm thinking about studying course 18, as i had a very heavy theoretical math bg throughout hs, but I'm also interested in exploring new pathways! areas I'm interested in include physics, architecture/design in general, and potentially aeroastro.

if any of y'all have personal experiences being singular about math in HS -> branching out at MIT -> ending back up in math, or alternatively, an entirely new subject area, I would love to hear your insight.

what aspects of the MIT experience make it conducive for this exploration? what aspects of it don't? any particular experiences with the pure math dept? i also get that there are options within course 18 itself, some of which are probably more "branched out" and flexible than others.

thanks so much guys, I'm so excited to hopefully be joining this community in the fall!!

Hey r/mit. I was wondering if anyone had any good class recommendations or suggestions on things to take this semester. I'm pretty open to any subject in any course number, as long as it's a good class.

For any alumni out there... any classes you wish you had taken / things that should absolutely not be missed?

Yes, google and look at the curriculum.

However, there are a variety of differences between electives, i.e. what students are allowed to take and what they actually take.

Why do students chose one and not the other? Are there differences in "difficulty" (I hate this question too)?

Any insight appreciated

Someone linked to one of my videos here and there seemed to be some interest in an AMA, so here goes!

The best explanation of this weird experiment is my TEDx Talk. The talk was in May, before I had finished.

Basic story: I graduated with a business degree, but I really wanted to learn computer science. I wasn't keen on going back to school, and I didn't really need another undergrad degree, so I wanted to see whether it would be possible to learn the curriculum of MIT's famed CS program, without paying for tuition.

My goal was to pass the final exams and complete the programming projects for the classes in the degree. There's a lot more detail, but you can see an FAQ and access all the code/exams I wrote here.

Before I ruffle too many feathers of the hard working grads/CS majors, I'll answer a few common questions right off the bat:

1. No, I didn't get a degree for this.

2. I don't see my challenge as being == to the experience of getting a degree from MIT. But the course path I followed reasonably approximated the breadth of material, and using MITs actual final exams and programming projects provides a reasonable approximation to the evaluation methods.

3. I worked on the project full-time, roughly 60 hours/week in the first few months, but shifting to 30-40 hours once I had completed a good chunk of the exams/classes.

I'll try to drop in to answer questions throughout the day.

Edit: Proof I am the person from the talks/videos: https://twitter.com/ScottHYoung/status/253504120445599745 (as for proof of having learned the material, the best I can offer is the code/exams I wrote, all uploaded here.)

Edit: Looks like the questions are winding down, and I need to get going. Thanks to everyone who participated, I hope I answered your question. If not, feel free to email me/check out my website: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/

7.03 and 20.110 lectures meet at the same time. Has anybody who's taken both comment on the necessity of going to lectures for either/both? Is it a really bad idea to try to do both in the fall?