
Ask HN: Is it worthy to do a MIT Challenge and how much will I benefit from it? - r3bl
In case you don&#x27;t know (and you probably don&#x27;t) about the MIT Challenge, it is a challenge where you try to finish the whole MIT curriculum on your own using the free MIT resources (available here [1]). Even though you don&#x27;t get an official MIT diploma, you actually learn pretty much everything MIT students learn (and you can prove it by doing some projects and putting them online).<p>It was suggested by Scott Young in a post in his blog [2]. He also gave a TEDx talk about it [3].<p>I&#x27;m wondering, how much will I benefit from it? Should I include it in my resume if I manage to complete it (under the additional education section)? Do you think it is worthy spending a year of doing so? Do you think that job recruiters will appreciate it?<p>[1] ocw.mit.edu&#x2F;index.htm
[2] www.scotthyoung.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;mit-challenge&#x2F;
[3] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=piSLobJfZ3c
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avinassh
Short answer is no. I really doubt how it will benefit if you try to learn 4
years of course in an year. Mostly you will be skimming things most of the
time. Learning things take time. It's not easy process. If you want to do it
to learn CS, but don't worry about completing in an year, then do it. However
it will take 2-3 years easily (assuming you have a day job).

Is it worth it? Yes, totally. But it may not be useful if you just want to
hurry up the whole thing. Your goal should be to learn, not to finish it in an
year.

I saw same discussion on /r/learnprogramming [0], the top answer reflects my
exact same opinion:

Given that the MIT challenge was never actually completed with integrity in
the first place, it's going to be impossible.

Scott Young is a publicist - his goal is to sell, sell, sell. Completing a
world-renowned 4-year curriculum in 1 years time is impossible.

Young marked his own tests (meaning no independent verification), gave himself
a pass threshold of 50% (when the reality for MIT is more like 70%), didn't do
his Psets, erased the original correct answers from the tests he found
(meaning that he already knew what the answers would be), and his only form of
progress comes in his one-man Youtube videos. There's no external validation
of his success, other than what we take his word to be.

He's a marketer, plain and simple.

[0] -
[http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/2vxt6r/the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/2vxt6r/the_mit_challenge/)

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lumberjack
No. If you have the time to sink figure out how to attend classes at the local
state university. A few college credits that way would be immensely more
valuable even if you don't complete the degree.

And having used MIT's material extensively while going through my studies I
have to say the material is not really extraordinary. It's not what gives MIT
students an edge over others. That edge is due to the motivating and
challenging environment. So you probably won't get MIT level anything just by
going through the videos and doing the problem sets.

