Majoring in Humanitites, Hotties, and Command of the English Language

Introduction
One big reason I applied to MIT and not, for instance, CalTech was because I wanted to be able to continue studying humanities. At MIT, you can major in theater arts, literature, music, writing, and so on. Granted, there are very few people who major in humanities here. Some of them got sick of science/engineering and switched over to a humanities major, while others double-major with engineering/science and humanities. I am double-majoring in engineering and humanities - caused me so much pain in terms of workload, but so extremely worth it.

Campus Life and Social Life
Being able to walk across a bridge, or take two subway stops, into Boston really rocks. The problem is, you'll probably be too busy to go out into Boston much. Luckily, there are a few good bars and restaurants in Cambridge right near campus.

The school's food plan sucks. A few dorms have dining plans, there is a grocery store and a few chain vendors and "cafes" that you get sick of pretty quickly, and there are a lot of outdoor food trucks that vary from decent to horrible. MIT doesn't give you food; it gives you kitchens in your dorms. A lot of people learn to cook when they get here. Advertisement
Academics
Yes, yes, everybody knows/assumes/has heard/can testify that the workload is killer. But honestly, if you got into MIT, or even made the decision to apply, you've probably whipped yourself so much in high school that nothing at MIT is really going to kill you. Workload and quality of academics vary greatly by major and by which classes you choose to take. There are professors great at teaching, and there are professors who are geniuses but simply can't teach. Your TA can often explain something better than your professor can.

Student Body
No, it's not really true that people at MIT are any uglier than the population at any other school (everybody everywhere complains about the lack of hotties no matter where they go to school, unless of course you go to school in California). Of course, the percentage of pasty, out-of-shape, and socially un-savvy kids here are slightly higher than at your typical school, but everybody else looks like your normal sample of the human population :-) For some reason, a lot of hot girls live on the east side of campus. One plus about dating at MIT is you'll never get "dumb blonds" or "dumb jocks."

I also notice that incoming freshmen are getting less and less nerdy and more diverse in their skills and interests. Maybe because admissions are getting so competitive these days that just being able to do amazing mental math and nothing else is not gonna cut it. Oh by the way, your writing and English abilities WILL degrade over your time at MIT (unless you major in literature or writing). It happened to me. Not that a lot of MIT students know how to write well in the first place <<howl of frustration>>!!! Read the student newspaper "The Tech" and you'll see what I mean.

In Closing...
Please, please visit and learn about the MIT experience as much as you can before you decide to come. It is a transformational experience worth every penny, but if you come here and find out that it's not for you, I imagine that staying here would be very painful due to the intensity of the academics.