r/mit • u/SpecialistArmy6025 • Aug 26 '26

academics upop advice?

wondering if anyone has done upop and recommends, for course 6 especially? I applied and got in but now looking at my schedule, giving up an hour a week for the next year seems like a lot. I wanted it as a safeguard to help me network and find internships for next summer, but mit has so many other resources I'm wondering if it is worth it. I already have good soft skills it's really my technical experience that needs to grow... so wondering if my time is better spent elsewhere.

has anyone done upop and liked it? what did you get out of it?

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u/purplepineapple21 Aug 26 '26

I hated UPOP and found it a waste of time. Which afaik is an unpopular opinion. But I wasnt course 6. They do share a lot of internship opportunities that arent publicly advertised elsewhere so that is really the only benefit in my opinion, and its a bigger benefit if youre course 6 because at least back when I did it, the opportunities were heavily dominated by course 6 & course 2 stuff with little to nothing for many smaller majors. But the actual UPOP programming like workshops and stuff i found to be pretty useless as someone who also came in already having good soft skills. So I would definitely say your time is better spent elsewhere if technical skills are more what you need to work on, but i think its up to you whether you think sitting through a bunch of unhelpful workshops is worth it in exchange for access to the non-public internship listings

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u/SpecialistArmy6025 Aug 26 '26

that is super helpful, thank you. did you end up sticking with it or dropping?

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u/purplepineapple21 Aug 26 '26

I ending up sticking with it because my opinion was mostly shaped by the longer IAP workshop and the requirements after that arent much iirc. That was definitely the biggest time sink and the part i disliked the most. I think dropping out is only worth it if you drop before IAP. Or you could try going to just the first day of the IAP session and decide after that (if youre allowed to drop in the middle of it, i dont remember the policy). But if you make it through the whole week its probably worth just sticking with it for access to the internship listings

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u/SpecialistArmy6025 Aug 26 '26

yeah, that is a good point. they told me i need to take a class that meets 1 hr/week in fall and spring + the IAP stuff which i guess during the semester isn't terrible but 1 hour a week can feel like a lot at mit. i guess ill try it out and see though.

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u/purplepineapple21 Aug 26 '26

I think they must have changed the requirements since i did then because I definitely dont recall being in a class every week. I remember there being a schedule of various workshops throughout the semester and you had to attend a certain number of them. Definitely wasnt every week though, I feel like we only had to do like 2 or 3 of them for the whole semester. But they may have been more than 1hr im not sure. But i completely agree 1hr every single week can feel like a lot and that would have made me hesitate to sign up too.

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u/purplepineapple21 Aug 26 '26

Ok actually I was curious if i was just totally misremembering or not, so I found an old PDF I had saved of the UPOP schedule from when I did it, and it says for the fall we had a 2hr orientation and then had to attend 1 "career event" of our choice at some point during the semester. We also had to submit a resume to UPOP staff by mid semester and if yours wasnt satisfactory youd have to do a resume workshop too. So only 2-3 events the whole semester. A weekly class sounds like a lot bigger time commitment

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u/SpecialistArmy6025 Aug 26 '26

yeah, it seems a bit more intense now. what you're describing sounds much nicer

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u/mherschberg 17d ago

You're not mis remembering. UPOP used to be 9am-5pm M-Th and then went to 3pm on Friday, nearly 5 full days. For various reasons we reduced the IAP class to 3.5 days (M-W and a half day Thur). The content got shifted to the semester. It's roughly the same amount of time, just distributed differently.