Clubs and Activities
Endless opportunities
From Mixers to Consulting Projects Abroad
The roughly 60 MIT Sloan clubs are an accurate metaphor for the MIT culture, distinguished by an absence of borders, and offering a host of experiential learning opportunities to create, organize, implement, and execute — everything from mixers to consulting projects to trips abroad. Many clubs, including the largest — TechLink with 1,200 members — are campus-wide.
A Pivotal Role in the MIT Sloan Experience
Student-run clubs play a pivotal role in the specialized MIT Sloan experience. Club members organize conferences, such as the Venture Capital Private Equity (VCPE) Conference and the Sports Analytics Conference, two of the largest conferences in the United States managed by students.
Competitions, Speakers, and Skill Building
Clubs run competitions, such as the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Clubs also bring in seasoned executives to conduct skills sessions and resume reviews, as well as informal lunch talks and broad networking sessions. In addition to professional clubs, there are groups for culture, sports, and other interests. There is even a club for spouses, partners, and significant others at MIT Sloan.
New clubs spring up all the time, and you can even start your own. Interested in global communications? Why not see what the president of India has to say about it? In the past, about two-dozen MBA students from MIT Sloan enrolled in a special course related to India and spent 10 days in the country, during which they met with the president and other high-ranking individuals. Want to push the limits of leadership? Organize a climb up Kilimanjaro. That’s what some members of Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) did in early 2011. There are few limits to what you can pursue with a strong interest.
Student Senate
A powerful force for positive change and community building, the Student Senate is MIT Sloan's official student government — and a critical link between the student body and the School's program management. Every MIT Sloan student is a potential Senator, and we encourage you to participate even if you're not interested in the responsibility of directly holding office.
Technology Clubs
MIT clubs often cater to interest groups around particular areas of technology, such as the Astropreneurs Club, BioPharma Business Club, Energy Club, Mobile Media Club, NeuroTech Club, and the NanoTech and TinyTech Clubs. All these clubs offer speaker programs with venture capitalists, MIT faculty, and entrepreneurs, helping to educate and connect club members to early-stage firms and to new ideas in their fields. These technology clubs also frequently organize major meetings and colloquia.
Spring Trips
Every year, several groups of MIT Sloan students, with the help of alumni and the assistance of the Student LIfe and Career Development offices, transform spring break into the opportunity of a lifetime — a chance for unprecedented access to the world's leaders in business, government, and NGOs. Whether it's networking with leading high-tech executives in Korea, meeting with the president of India and touring major industries there, or viewing Africa's small business and development prospects up-close — each trip provides enriching educational and personal experiences that students draw upon for a lifetime.
MIT Sloan students initiate these Spring Trips, generate ideas for great trip locations, carefully plan itineraries, and then apply to the Student Affairs Office for support. Each trip is a partnership among the student organizers, staff ambassadors, and faculty sponsors — and every trip is unforgettable. Recent Spring Trip destinations have included China, Africa, India, Korea, Turkey, and Brazil.
Club Sports
MIT Sloan boasts one of the largest and most diverse club sports programs anywhere, with one of the highest participation rates. Whether you gravitate to basketball or ballroom dancing, Aikido or ultimate Frisbee, there's a team for you. Because we're just steps from the banks of the Charles River, many students also take advantage of opportunities to sail, canoe, row crew, or run, enjoying some well-earned leisure time.
Through MIT's state-of-the-art Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center (the Z-Center), MIT Sloan students have easy access to an outstanding array of athletic facilities, including cardio machines, free weights, squash courts, floor hockey, basketball, aerobics, volleyball, and an Olympic-size pool.
"After we gave our recommendations, the great part was that the very next day the CEO was in the boardroom implementing them with his top vice presidents."
“[The India Lab] program is one of the reasons I came to Sloan. ... The hands-on learning that MIT offers was a huge differentiator.”
“The conditions in the neighborhoods we were visiting were different than what we realized before getting there. Beyond that, what was surprising was that there weren’t surprises!”
“It was really rewarding that they wanted to know what we thought. We left there being fairly certain that they will do some of the things that we suggested.”
“I love being in a place that is such a nexus of people and ideas — people coming to learn something new and to define themselves. Being a part of that process is a real honor and a real gift.”
“We’re very interdisciplinary. Among the faculty in the group are an economist, a political scientist, a sociologist, and an industrial relations specialist. We’ve always made a big effort to be open to a variety of perspectives, but also to go beyond being open to them, to want to bring them in, because it makes for a richer environment.”
“I knew about American business, but not enough about what’s really become a global economy. … You can read about it all you want, but there’s no substitute for being there and seeing the context and seeing how completely different these [other countries] are.”
“One of the reasons I came to Sloan was because I wanted to be at a top MBA institution worldwide. But I also wanted access to working with the latest innovations and the highest technology that was coming out of the MIT labs.”
“The concept behind enterprise architecture is that you have all these machines, you have all these business processes, you have all these people doing things, how do you make sure they all come together and achieve business objectives that make you more competitive.”
“Because of the diversity of our backgrounds, when we hit the ground in Tanzania it almost was a natural play where different people assume different roles.”
“You could talk about watershed management and conservation of energy all you want. But until you put numbers to it and financial analysis to it, you’re not going to get much done. I came to business school to speak that language, speak with people in terms of numbers, financial numbers so that I can get projects done.”
“We are very much an action-learning environment. The way to learn leadership is not only through reading cases, not only through learning theory — in fact we don’t want people to regurgitate the theory. We want people to take theory and to live it, use it.”
“At MIT Sloan you have a lot of opportunities to explore entrepreneurship. Especially in a place like Kampala where you have a lot of development, entrepreneurship can be very exciting.”
“The assistant to the CEO was like our host mom while we were there. She arranged our housing for us, she took us out to her friend’s game farm, and we got driven around in 4x4s. She was just wonderful to meet, and we developed a personal as well as professional relationship with her.”
“I think MIT Sloan does a great job of breaking monolithic disciplinary approaches to issues and throws together a group of scholars who are really learning from each other to have multiple approaches to similar problems.”
