Harvard BBS vs. MIT Biology

[hippopotamus]

Can anyone provide any insight on how these two programs compare to each other? Harvard BBS has a much larger faculty than MIT (~300 vs. ~70) - would this change the graduate school experience at all?

[Kaede]

The structures of the programs are different. Everyone at MIT bio takes their classes in the first semester and four week rotations start second semester, while BBS courses span first year and the program overall is more flexible.

If I'm not mistaken, BBS also has a biomedical focus while MIT is on the more basic science side.

[Nomad1111]

Ohh I'm also interested in this, not only for Harvard BBS vs MIT biology, but also Harvard vs MIT overall.

[hippopotamus]

6 hours ago, Kaede said:

The structures of the programs are different. Everyone at MIT bio takes their classes in the first semester and four week rotations start second semester, while BBS courses span first year and the program overall is more flexible.

If I'm not mistaken, BBS also has a biomedical focus while MIT is on the more basic science side.

A professor told me that MIT collaborates a lot with harvard medical school, so maybe they do have a biomedical focus? Though I'm not sure as well

Edited February 11, 2017 by hippopotamus

[Kaede]

3 hours ago, hippopotamus said:

A professor told me that MIT collaborates a lot with harvard medical school, so maybe they do have a biomedical focus? Though I'm not sure as well

Well yes, collaborations always happen between the two, especially if a professor at MIT has a more translational focus or is looking to conduct a translational project. Perhaps the largest collaboration between the two is the MD-PhD program, where students get an MD at HMS and a PhD at MIT. But in terms of the programs themselves, MIT does focus far more on basic science. It doesn't mean there aren't researchers that are on the more translational side (especialy at the Broad) but in general there is a cultural difference between the two programs that way.

[Epigenetics]

They're completely different programs.

Harvard BBS is very broad and flexible, rotations are organized by the students, the curriculum is very flexible apart from a few base courses, and there are a huge number of hospital faculty available to you as well as anyone in "HILS (Harvard Integrated Life Sciences)" across the campus. Harvard Med has faculty at all the hospitals (MGH, Dana-Farber, Boston Children's, Beth Israel, Brigham and Women's) so there's a lot of faculty who do medical research from varied angles (from basic to clinical) that you can work with. 

MIT Biology is much much more rigid, no rotations for the first semester, then everyone does three 4-week rotations before choosing a dissertation lab. Also the classes I think are a bit more set in stone but I may be wrong on that. In MIT biology your faculty has to be in the biology department, not anyone at MIT who does biology, so the choices are more limited. Also no MIT faculty have hospital or medical affiliations, they're all basic science, so while they may collaborate on medical problems or work on models of disease, they don't have the same access to patient samples/clinical research as Harvard does. 

Both programs are rather large, although I think BBS is a bit larger (65-70 for BBS per year to 50 or so for MIT as far as I know) but the general philosophies and structures are vastly different. A really good example of this is the Harvard/MIT Health Sciences Technology program, where MIT and Harvard partner so that MIT can have a more medically focused resource. This really only matters if you want to do actual clinical work or work with patient samples, as otherwise you need to get them from a collaborator, which also isn't impossible at all but I think speaks to the broader philosophies and focuses of the two programs.

Harvard has several other biology PhD programs that vary in the faculty you can work with and the structure, but even the most rigid (I have a friend in Immunology which is very rigid) doesn't have the hard structure to rotations that MIT does, so I think in general Harvard can be said to be less structured but obviously there will be corner cases to any such assertion.

[The Precambrian Rabbit]

I don't know about MIT biology (but I do know the courses are rigorous because I took some of them as undergrad), but in my opinion I think Harvard bbs is also doing lots of basic sciences, at least more than Harvard MCO does. I think it still depends on specific labs. It's common for Harvard students to take classes at MIT (not sure about the other way around but certainly doable).