At MIT, everything is done a little differently, and everything, of course, is numbered:
GPA – Grade point average is calculated on a 5-point scale. A = 5, B = 4, C = 3, D = 2, F = 0. Thus it’s the same as a 4-point scale, plus one, unless you get an F, in which case you’re penalized a bit more.
Buildings – The buildings are numbered, roughly 1-56. Only “the Green building” manages to be called by name on a regular basis. Some major classrooms are 26-100 and 10-250 (twenty-six one hundred and ten two-fifty).
Credits/Units – A normal class is not 3 credits, but 12 units. 3-0-9 to be more specific, which ostensibly means three hours of lecture, no lab, and nine hours of homework, per week. Curiously a 5-0-7 class (typically three hours of lecture plus two hours of recitation) does not generally yield the implied two hours less homework per week. A harder class can be 15 units, sometimes 18, and a few are 24 – “Unified” in Aero/Astro may have even been 48 or something. Anyway, this can leave an MIT student blissfully clueless about normal people and their “3-credit” and “4-credit” classes. I at least like to pretend that you divide MIT units by three to get credits, but that’s probably exaggerated.
Courses – The courses of study are called Course 1, Course 2, ranging roughly from 1-27. These days I can only really remember the ones I took classes in. Course 6 is EECS, Course 18 is Mathematics, Course 14 is Economics, Course 3 is Materials Science, Course 8 is Physics. I think the History and Humanities stuff I took was in 21 or something. I happen to also remember that Course 1 was Civil Engineering, Course 5 was Chemistry, and Course 7 was Biology, for various reasons.
Within Course 6, a 6-1 (six one) was an electrical engineer, like Wes, and a 6-3 (six three) was a computer scientist, like me. 6-2 was some weird hybrid of the two. Since Wes now writes code all day and I write text all day, maybe the hybrids made more sense than I thought.
Classes – The classes are numbered based on the course. There is no Physics 101, that would be too commonplace. Instead, your first physics class is 8.01, 8.01x, or if you still have your ego, 8.012. (The decimal point is mercifully silent: eight oh one, eight oh one ex, eight oh one two.) Your first Chemistry class is either 3.091 or 5.11 (here’s why I remember Course 5, though I chose 3.091). Your first Calculus class is 18.01, 18.011, or 18.012 (again, if you are under the mistaken impression that you are smart). If you’re a compleat moron like myself, even after being hammered by 8.012 and 18.012 you still take 8.022 and 18.022 the next semester.