MIT markets ingenuity with hacks

Anyone who has attended or lived near MIT knows its predilection for hacks, elaborate pranks that make most people laugh out loud and then start to wonder how they did it. There was the inflating MIT balloon at the 50-yard-line of the Harvard Yale Game in 1982. And there was the time students put a police car on the Great Dome with its lights flashing. Well, they've done it again. MIT students apparently stole a Civil war-era cannon from CalTech, shipped it to Cambridge, and put an MIT custom-built class ring on it.

Now of course, this is all very amusing, but think for a moment about the fact that MIT competes for the best and most innovative graduating seniors each year. You couldn't ask for a better differentiator for those creative, creme de la creme students who actually have the luxury of choosing which of several schools they will attend in the fall. This is marketing and PR MIT couldn't (and quite frankly wouldn't) buy -- and is one of the reasons why they continue to have one of the most accomplished and successful student bodies in the country. Proof again that good marketing doesn't have to be stuffy.

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