All incoming graduate students must demonstrate satisfactory English writing ability, or successfully complete appropriate training in writing. This requirement reflects the faculty’s conviction that writing is an essential skill for an engineer with an advanced degree.

The MechE Department requires all incoming graduate students, native as well as foreign, to take the Institute’s Graduate Writing Examination. This exam is administered in the summer before matriculation. Depending on the results, a student will either (a) pass the writing ability requirement, (b) be required to take a relatively short, but intensive, seminar-workshop in expository writing (21W.794 Technical Writing Workshop) during the Independent Activities Period in January, or (c) be required to take a course in writing. Several courses suitable for engineers and scientists are offered at MIT, and special courses are available for those for whom English is a second language.

In addition, MIT requires that all graduate students for whom English has not been the language of instruction in both elementary and secondary school take an English Evaluation Test. This test is separate from the aforementioned Graduate Writing Examination required by the Department.