Course Descriptions

These are not exhaustive lists, just what has been taken by past CMEs - look around and make the most of what MIT has to offer! You can also take classes at other universities in Boston - a few people this year took classes at Harvard (more on the cross-registration process further down).

It’s a good idea to check out what MIT students from previous years thought about a class by going to http://web.mit.edu/subjectevaluation/results.html.

A note on the difference between undergraduate and graduate classes. Graduate classes are not necessarily too difficult for undergraduates, and it is fairly common for undergrads to take grad classes, but you really have to be careful to choose one that is indeed do-able. Check the prereqs, talk to your academic advisor, and talk to former CMEs to make sure you’re making a good choice on your courses.

A trap that people have fallen into (by which I mean me) is thinking that MIT will be like Cambridge, in that if you don’t really understand something you’ll be able to go away and teach it to yourself and catch up just by putting the hours in outside of class. This is not possible at MIT. Courses are structured around instant examination, so you don’t have time to go away and teach yourself any large volume of stuff to keep up with the rest of the class. This means that classes are in general less demanding, but if you don’t have the prerequisites you’ll have a really rough time of it.

Course 6 - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Talk to Ramji Venkataramanan, the CME advisor for Information Engineering, as he’s really helpful. Also talk to other students when you get to MIT.

Also take a look at https://hkn.mit.edu/new_ug/ - a course evaluation website specific to course 6. You will need MIT certificates to access it.

Course 6 classes covered by CUED part 1
6.01, 6.02, 6.002, 6.003 (mostly),  6.004 (only the start), 6.007, 6.041 (only the start), 6.042 (partly)

Course 16 - Aeronautics & Astronautics
If you’re majoring in course 16, definitely talk to Prof Steven Barrett for help picking classes. Aero students are in the unfortunate position that it is hard to find classes that are pitched at the right level for CMEs. For example, 16.100 is necessary since it covers some content from 3A1 but it is quite easy in general. 16.50 is interesting but repeats information from the IB aerothermal elective, and the next step up 16.511 is very difficult without having done 16.50 first. You should consider taking 2.25 for a more rigorous mathematical treatment of fluids, and 2.29 if your computational curiosity cannot be satiated with 16.90.

Recommended classes in other majors:

2.092 - Finite Element Analysis of Solids and Fluids I

2.25 - Fluid Mechanics

2.29 - Numerical Fluid Mechanics

The combination of 16.100, 16.110 and 2.25 has a lot of overlapping content. You can view this as making your life easier, or you might want to pick something else to broaden your horizons.

Cross Registration
MIT lets you cross-register (ie. take courses) at some different universities, so if you want to get out of MIT for a bit then think about cross registering at Harvard, Wellesley, or MassArt. If you want to do a science/ engineering course at Harvard then you might have some trouble getting it validated to put towards your technical requirements, but if you do it to try something different (humanities, arts, business) then it just counts towards your total units. MIT also offers Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) classes which can be really good!

Useful things to note:
 * Check when the semester starts at the other college! Harvard starts one week before MIT. This makes it very easy to miss the first class, which isn’t necessarily a deal breaker but can be a bit stressful if you don’t already know this. It is better to take a Harvard class in the fall than in the spring: Finals line up better and if you take it in the spring you'll miss spring break as well as part of IAP.
 * Add/drop dates are different. MIT lets you add and drop classes really late into semester, which is great for us. Harvard does not! This mean if you drop a class at Harvard after their drop date but before the MIT drop date then it shows up as a fail on your Harvard transcript, but not on your MIT transcript, which is probably all you really care about.
 * Do your research before getting to MIT. The first week after arrival is hectic, and you definitely won’t have time to look through the huge numbers of classes offered at Harvard before their semester begins.
 * Check out http://web.mit.edu/registrar/reg/xreg/ for all the details on what you have to do. Navigating the Harvard course website is pretty confusing, it might be worth talking to an MIT student who’s done it before to get some help.