Visiting MIT

Visiting MIT was a primary objective of this time's trip to Boston. First I joined to the official campus tour, and then I had luckily two good and kind PhD students shown me their research area and the office/building briefly, then afterward talked more having dinner at Tibetan cuisine restaurant in Cambridge. There I could get much information which will strongly influence to my future plan so that I would think about going to MIT seriously if in the world I would get accepted.
One of them is in Media lab, and the other is in Aerospace & Astronautics but is also related to SDM(System Design Management) program which I'm planning to apply. What could influence me most are:
(Related to MIT's entry)

• Having specialized only in software without conventional knowledge in aerospace can be possible for majoring in aerospace degree in graduate school

• Empirically saying, score of GRE verbal is not so important for Japanese student

• Few researchers work only for SDM. Most of instructors belong to the departments other than SDM

• Japanese student may be competitive for entrance exam since there are only few Japanese every year and the school tend to balance variety of students' background

• Coldness in winter in Boston is better than that of Tokyo

(Related to Aerospace job)

• There is a non-US person who only has Greencard and is working at Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA (JPL)

Climate being better than I expected in Boston and flixibility of graduate program in MIT made me change my mind. It might sound silly to some people especially who work, but climate in the area I work/go to school is important. I couldn't bear Tokyo's humid Summer and freezing Winter. And I've been afraid that I only know about software even though I like to go to astronautics field, but at least in MIT that might not mean it's impossible for me to attend AE.

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Finally,
I came to know Dr. Kosuke Ishii who was teaching at Stanford died in last March at the age of 51. Recently he was also teaching at Keio university in Japan and I heard he was one of whom can talk about American way of systems engineering in Japanese. Rest in peace Dr. Ishii.
(Stanford Report, March 11) 2009 Kosuke Ishii, known for teaching manufacturing design, is dead at 51)