The first thing that hit us was the size of the campus. Imagine if Trinity included everything from O’Connell street to Stephens green and your getting close to the length of it, its about half that in width. But despite the campuses immense size there are only 4k undergrads (and 6k post grads).

We walked from the on campus tube station (Kendall) to the main building, passing a lab on the way showing a sign on the window saying “Tapping on the glass may scare the animals”. Upon arrival in the main lobby area Dan, Colm and Gareth left for their presentations. We sat and waited for the on campus tour to start. There are two walking tours each day.

We were in a group with a few prospective students and a rather loud past student who seemed at some points to think we was the tour guide. We first saw the student centre, and then the sports facilities. We learned that in order to graduate you must pass a swimming test which consists of swimming 100m and treading water for five minutes. The idea being that because the campus is for a large part on the riverbanks, if you fell in you could save yourself. The test can be taken at any time and most students get it over with in orientation week though those who cant swim spend some time over the four years learning and then take it near the end.

Next we moved back to the main lobby area and we were told of the MIT meaning of hacking. Hacking in MIT has nothing to do with computers and concerns ingenious pranks students play. One such example is that students managed to cover the words Agriculture and Commerce in the colleges’ motto “Established for Advancement and Development of Science its Application to Industry the Arts, Agriculture and Commerce” with Entertainment and Hacking using painted Styrofoam boards. The hack was so successful that when the security guards came to the area after hearing students were on the roof they noticed nothing out of the ordinary, infact, three separate instigation’s found nothing until the hackers rang in and told them what had been done.

Other hacks have included placing what seemed like a campus security guards car on top of the largest dome. The car was really just a shell but it included a dummy of a cop, a box of donuts and coffee, flashing lights, furry dice and a parking ticket.

It became quite obvious that MIT was the college in Boston with the sense of humour. The bookshop also sells MIT clothing and many support Harvard bashing references like “Friends don’t let friends go to Harvard”.

The tour also brought us past Boston’s tallest building. Buildings in Boston have a heights limit (or at least did when this was built) of 30 floors. This minor sang was circumvented by making the first floor 30m high. This building has square windows which look like pixels and so one hack was to convert this building into a giant game of Tetris.

So after the tour we visited the MIT museum which included displays on early photography, holograms and AI. It was well worth the visit. We were planning on going to a Google talk but when we turned up we discovered it was a tutorial for MIT students only.

MIT is a great place and I would love to do a post grad there. Over 80% of the students study Science or Engineering though they still offer a wide range of courses from Law to Arts.

Back then to rest a bit before dinner, which was meant to be Italian but upon seeing the menu prices we decided to go for a Chinese. If you receive small red chillies with a “hot” meal please don’t chew them to a paste…

After that most went back for sleep but I went to an Irish pub with Dan (Nagle), Colm, Cian, Ivan and Steve. Me being the “designated driver” got free Sprite which I wasn’t complaining about. There was a list of translations painted on the wall of the pub from Irish-Englishto US-English including Rashers, jammers and bold.