It’d be a real shame if they did. Yes, I know the chances of being accepted are slim. High school was boring, so I studied technology instead.  In some ways, I do regret that a bit.

I feel like my reasons for applying are sound though…

The school feels too corporate.

• The amount of paperwork and red tape needed to get anything done is very excessive, and if you want to try anything ‘dangerous’, good luck. In order to get approval to do anything with say, voltages exceeding 50V, a mountain of paperwork and red tape needs to be overcome. Often, professors and students just do what they need to in secret because of this, and that’s no way to go about research.
• It’s almost impossible to get funding if your organization is not a well-established club. If you do have funding, your spending is limited to mcmaster-carr or any other place where a ‘tax-free agreement’ is reached. Good luck ordering a 50kV pulse capacitor, or an Edwards vacuum pump seal from mouser at any price better than ebay.
• Policies. Policies that don’t adapt with time, and make life harder for everyone on campus. Bureaucracy.

I can’t say I’m too surprised. For most of its history RIT was, and to some extent still is a vocational college. Learn a skill, find a co-op and start your career. Something like that naturally breeds a corporate environment, and RIT certainly has one.

They’re trying to change that though, but it’s not going too well.

It’s not designed for curious, well-learned students.

I suppose I need another <li> to explain this one.

• The engineering curriculum, (everything apart from the math courses, which are fantastic) is designed for the average incoming freshman. This makes sense, of course, seeing as 98% of the people accepted are recent high school graduates. But still, the curriculum assumes you know nothing initially about what you want to study, and if you want to study say, EE, you’re not going to begin digital electronics until your fourth year. It’s disheartening, especially so when I’ve been building things with the 4000 series logic blocks since I was 10!
• Questions asked don’t require you to think. In many courses, tests are based solely on your ability to answer questions as fast and as accurately as possible,  not your ability to creatively invent a solution to the problem. This sucks, because I’m terrible at quickly answering math questions. Integration isn’t an impossible task, but it’s much like Heisenberg’s principle; the faster I do it, the more uncertain my answers will become.
• Classes are sequenced in such a way that they assume underclassman are too inept to take them, and classes which won’t do a person any good they cannot test out of. This is a shame.

I’m not learning to secure a job. I’m learning because it’s what I want to, and it will make me a better innovator because of it. I’m tired of just memorizing formulas. I’m learning much more from opencourseware than I am in a couple of my classes here, and sometimes it’s hard to balance the two when the curriculums don’t line up.

I simply don’t fit in here.

I came to RIT expecting to be surrounded by people like me; inquisitive, creative and science-loving geeks, eager to learn and eager to experiment. People who live every day to the fullest, and do their best to figure out how to answer problems they can’t initially solve. People who have the intelligence, creativity and determination needed to help me launch a business.

I haven’t found that.

Rather, I have instead found a student body that mostly plays League of Legends or WOW instead of studying, would wake up at 2pm if they could, and either relies on yahoo answers to solve their questions, or simply gives up on them; much like 99% of the US population. Fewer than 4 people regularly come to the global village hackerspace.

Out of 5,500 STEM students, what the hell kind of turnout is that?Simply put, the student body isn’t what I expected. For your brighter-than average dubstep-loving nerdy kid with 200 steam games in his/her library it’s definitely a cool place, but for a self-motivated, creative person who has been building things and experimenting their whole life, it’s like a shoe that doesn’t quite fit.

And so, I have applied for transfer to MIT. It’s everything I am as a person, and I want to be with others like me.

Don’t understand me wrong, RIT is a nice school. It really is; most professors care about their students, the dorms don’t reek of weed and [some] students do actually try. The food is nice, the weather isn’t bad and apart from the building numbering system I still can’t figure out, it’s a rather well kept campus. If you’re a geeky kid who loves engineering, juggling, cosplay and Battlefield 3, by all means this college is great.

I just don’t think it’s the right place for me.