> As a reference, my top 25 CS program had 1 professor whose resume matches anyone in the business, but that was it, whereas at MIT you would have many more potential recommenders with a ton of pull.
MIT's policy for granting tenure which is enforced in part by the relevant Visiting Committee, is that you don't get it unless you're #1 or #2 in your subfield, and sometimes #3.
Which brings up that part of MIT governance, a variety of areas beyond departments and special institutions like the Media Lab have a Visiting Committee that regularly physically visits and talks to the stakeholders, including students for what was once one office for them. It's a critical part of maintaining the overall quality of the Institute, is by no means unique to the Institute although I don't know if it's used as widely in a lot of other universities.
Per https://corporation.mit.edu/committees/visiting-committees they were established 10 years after the real start of MIT (the Civil War broke out two days after it got chartered), there are 30 including for "the Libraries, the offices of the Dean for Student Life and the Dean for Undergraduate Education, and Sponsored Research."
OK, MIT's general library is small and thus subpar, and in the 1980s MIT paid Harvard a million dollars a year to give the humanities professors access to its stacks, but I'll comment the one for "Management & Social Sciences" was excellent back then for the latter topic.
BUT, the OP is an enterprising fellow, he could make a point of befriending one or more Harvard students, plenty are good people and interested in STEM, and you can help him do some research in their huge libraries and get some of this in return, or as I did do this on topics we were both interested in. I can attest that Harvard's general, law, and medical libraries are every bit as good as advertised. Which brings up the general advantage of the Boston area, it's "the Athens of America," there's real advantages to that.
MIT's policy for granting tenure which is enforced in part by the relevant Visiting Committee, is that you don't get it unless you're #1 or #2 in your subfield, and sometimes #3.
Which brings up that part of MIT governance, a variety of areas beyond departments and special institutions like the Media Lab have a Visiting Committee that regularly physically visits and talks to the stakeholders, including students for what was once one office for them. It's a critical part of maintaining the overall quality of the Institute, is by no means unique to the Institute although I don't know if it's used as widely in a lot of other universities.
Per https://corporation.mit.edu/committees/visiting-committees they were established 10 years after the real start of MIT (the Civil War broke out two days after it got chartered), there are 30 including for "the Libraries, the offices of the Dean for Student Life and the Dean for Undergraduate Education, and Sponsored Research."
OK, MIT's general library is small and thus subpar, and in the 1980s MIT paid Harvard a million dollars a year to give the humanities professors access to its stacks, but I'll comment the one for "Management & Social Sciences" was excellent back then for the latter topic.
BUT, the OP is an enterprising fellow, he could make a point of befriending one or more Harvard students, plenty are good people and interested in STEM, and you can help him do some research in their huge libraries and get some of this in return, or as I did do this on topics we were both interested in. I can attest that Harvard's general, law, and medical libraries are every bit as good as advertised. Which brings up the general advantage of the Boston area, it's "the Athens of America," there's real advantages to that.