I came across 10 Lessons of an MIT Education, an interesting document on scribd. Some good parts
- Four courses in science and engineering each term is a heavy workload for anyone; very few students fail to learn, first and foremost, the discipline of intensive and constant work.
- Lesson Three: By and large, "knowing how" matters more than "knowing what." Half a century ago, the philosopher Gilbert Ryle discussed the difference between "knowing how" courses are those in mathematics, the exact sciences, engineering, playing a musical instrument, even sports. "Knowing what" courses are those in the social sciences, the creative arts, the humanities, and those aspects of a discipline that are described as having social value.
- Lesson seven: The world and your career are unpredictable, so you are better off learning subjects of permanent value.
- Lesson Ten: Mathematics is still the queen of the sciences. Alumni who return to visit invariably complain of not having taken enough math courses while they were undergraduates. It is a fact, confirmed by the history of science since Galileo and Newton, that the more theoretical and removed from immediate applications a scientific topic appears to be, the more likely it is to eventually find the most striking practical applications.
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