Master of Engineering
From GradBook
The MIT Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (MEng EECS) professional degree program is designed to be combined with one of the three bachelor degree programs in MIT EECS into a seamless five-year course of study that includes advanced coursework beyond the bachelor requirements and a thesis.
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History
Prof. William Siebert (now emeritus) first proposed the idea of a five-year professional degree in the late 1980s. Many EECS faculty committees worked on developing what came to be known as the MEng over the next several years. The program, which included a new curriculum for the undergraduate degrees and introduced the 6-2 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degree, was approved by MIT in 1993.
Admission and eligibility
Only MIT undergraduates majoring in Course VI who are juniors or higher may apply for the MEng program. Although MIT EECS undergraduates may apply for the regular graduate program, they are ineligible to receive the SM degree and must complete the MEng before continuing on for the PhD. The MEng application consists of a checklist of subjects taken and grades received. Students with a GPA of 4.25 out of 5.0 or higher (in their technical classes -- 6, 8 and 18) are generally admitted automatically, those with 4.0 or lower are usually rejected, and those between 4.0 and 4.25 have their decisions deferred pending performance in the subsequent term.
Requirements
The MEng requires successful completion of one of the Course VI bachelor degree programs, two advanced math subjects, 66 units of graduate-level credit (of which 42 units must be earned from four H-level subjects), and a thesis. For more details, see the Brief Guide to MIT's EECS Degree Programs.
Administration
The administrator of the MEng program is Anne Hunter.
Course of the program
Though the program is conceived to be a seamless five-year combined course with the bachelor's, MIT policies and human psychology dictate otherwise. The MIT Registrar requires that every regular student be categorized as either an undergraduate or graduate student, but not both. Students admitted to the MEng program may change their status to graduate student after they've earned 180 units beyong the GIRs, even if they haven't completed the requirements for the bachelors. This move may afford them certain privileges, such as being a TA or RA, though RAs and TAs are limited to taking only two subjects.
Students are intended to receive the SB and MEng simultaneously at the end of five years. Pressures such as the parents' desire to see their child get an MIT degree after four years and students' desire to attend Commencement with the rest of their non-Course VI classmates cause a majority of students to pick up their SB degrees after four years and the MEng a year later.
A large minority of students take longer than five total years at to receive the MEng degree. The most common reason is that such students may have TAed one or more times, which significantly slows down thesis progress, especially if the students are still taking subjects.
Buckets
MIT's policies require a distinction between undergraduate and graduate programs. MIT has a set of requirements to get a bachelor's degree and a different set of requirements to get a master's degree. Classes can be used to satisfy one set of requirements or the other, but not both. Even though the EECS department wants the MEng program to be an undergraduate/graduate hybrid program, MIT does not have the policy framework to support this. Therefore, MEng students must decide which classes will be part of their undergraduate program and which will be part of their graduate program. Thus, students place classes in either their undergraduate "bucket" or their graduate "bucket."
For more details about buckets, see the Buckets page.
Criticism
Since its inception, the MEng program has received some criticism from students and faculty alike. Some students believe that the program guarantees funding for the graduate year, which is not correct, but most students are supported. Many end up going through the program as a way to get a better job a year later and grumble that they had to pay their own way through it. Some research supervisors complain that one year is not long enough to train a student to produce a high-quality master's thesis. Others counter that students can get a head start by finding a UROP junior year with the intention of expanding it into MEng research during senior year, or that professors not expect the same caliber of work from a two-year Master of Science (SM) thesis, with which many are familiar, and an MEng thesis. Lecturers of introductory graduate-level subjects also complain that their classes are filled with MEng students. Some lectures have stated that, anecdotally, MEng students have had a harder time doing well than their SM/PhD classmates. However, just as there are gems amongst the MEng students, there are many more duds in the PhD program that somehow got in despite being totally useless.
There is an underlying lack of respect for MEng students by their SM/PhD counterparts.
