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enginuity |  |
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Undergraduate Exchange Scheme
This year, for the first time, students from Cambridge University were given the opportunity to spend their third year studying at MIT, courtesy of the undergraduate exchange scheme set-up by CMI (see Enginuity 10 for details). Around twenty students from CUED took up the offer. So how did they find it?
For Liz Gaunt it was her first visit to the USA. "Firstly I was surprised
by how hot and humid Boston was when we arrived at the end of August. We were
very well looked after, and given advice on which modules to choose for study,
to fit in with our course here. At MIT study options are much more flexible,
and you can drop courses and take up new ones if things don't work out. It is
possible to take courses at a number of different levels, and I did take a couple
of graduate courses whilst there, which was a good opportunity to get a flavour
of post-graduate academic life. One thing that I particularly enjoyed was the
opportunity to spend a quarter of my time studying Japanese. I had started doing
that at CUED, but that was only for a couple of hours a week. The courses had
a much greater practical bias than ours do, and I enjoyed the challenge of being
expected to learn how to do things ourselves. There were always labs full of
assistants where you could go for help if you needed it, and the academics kept
certain times when they guaranteed to be available for drop-in help."
Ed Hill particularly enjoyed the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). This scheme allows undergraduates at MIT to work on research projects at any time during their degree course. "This is a good way of helping undergraduates to be aware of the research that is going on. At MIT the students get to know the faculty staff very well. It felt much more like being at school-a real twenty-four hour experience. Stress levels are legendary as students tend to socialise by working together. Labs are open until 1am, and many of the courses are run on a 'teach yourself' basis, which gives a lot of flexibility."
Thankfully, the students taking part in this undergraduate exchange scheme seemed pleased to return, although they thoroughly enjoyed the MIT experience and had made many new friends. Even better, they felt that the first two years of the CUED engineering course had equipped them with the skills they needed to be able to cope pretty well with the demands of studying at MIT.
| number 11, autumn '02 |