What do people do when they graduate MIT? It’s funny to see how many of the majors have common career paths ahead of them. These all play into the stereotypes of the majors at MIT. It’s an easy litmus test into figuring out what you could major in, but as with all stereotypes, they don’t apply to everyone haha nor are they true year to year… Fyi: this post is a small interlude to my actual thoughts. If you don’t know what the course numbers are, google it. Note: take everything with a grain of salt, obviously.

So what do most majors do after graduation?

In my time here, course 10/20s majors usually goes into consulting, course 2s into robotics, course 16s to defense, course 18s into trading, and course 15s to PM. Course 5/7s goes into med school for another ‘couple’ of years. Course 4s are just always hosed, and course 17’s are nonexistent :(. Course 6s go everywhere in whatever industry they want, but few go into startups. Course 3/8s go to grad school but sometimes get poached to do more ‘exciting’ things in industry… Course 16s who realize they hate working for the government get PhDs, joining the 22s who pretty much can only get PhDs (I don’t want my nuclear reactor to explode, thank you very much).

Apple loves course 2s, and course 16s love Tesla and SpaceX. Most course 6s want to work at FAANG companies before realizing the enormity and decide to work at smaller companies instead.

Course 6s choose to take too many challenging classes but don’t show up to their lectures, course 8 has to (for both), and course 4s can’t take too many classes because they’re stuck in the studio all day (and night). Course 18/15/14s struggle to find challenge classes to take in their major, so some decide to double major or minor.

Honestly, most of this is probably not true. But what’s the fun in that? No major is more fun than any other (although some can be easier), but at the end of the day, you can take almost any class you want (even in different majors and without any prereqs), so the only thing that is different at the end of the day is what words are printed on your diploma :) and what knowledge you learned.