New Mexico Tech

The town of Socorro is an interesting place; On weekends, the population goes down by a quantity approximately equal to the schools enrolment. An interesting set of statistics: the town has one of the highest PhD per capita rates in the world, and the highschool has one of the highest pregnancy rates in the country. The latter might be attributable to the 3:1 male:female ratio at the school.

I've heard several stories about marijunana growing on the golf course there, as far away as Washington State.

New Mexico Tech is surely New Mexico’s most unique and difficult public school. I have been told that the GPA of graduating student is almost inconsequential, because just graduating NMT is such an accomplishment that most companies that know their stuff will hire you anyway. From my own experience, this is entirely true.

NMT is very extreme in the way it does things. The classes are hard, require a lot of work, and don’t allow much room for failure. The students either adapt or leave. Those that adapt are privy to an amazing culture that defies most description.

The Nicotine Patch was invented by a former professor at NMT and he and NMT share the patent for it.

Your average Techie is a tall, white, gangly computer geek. They are Computer Science majors that run Linux or dual-boot it with Windows 2000 on their self-made computers. The school itself runs Linux on most of its computers. When the students aren’t studying or at their computers, they go to Albuquerque, because there isn’t much to do in Socorro. The two most popular clubs are the Anime club and Adventure’s Guild (a role-playing game club). The male/female ratio is at least 3/2, so for an already anti-social computer geek, chances of landing a girl from this college are very very slim.

New Mexico Tech is not without its legends. One of these is the unofficial mascot of New Mexico Tech, the Green Sheep. Though I still don’t know the full story, and I doubt anyone does, as it changes by word of mouth, it has something to do with lonely miners, sheep, and an errant science experiment. Another legend that is probably closer to truth than the Green Sheep is the story of the time that the dining hall served some bad food and gave the entire campus food poisoning, even resulting in deaths. Even though they have changed catering services, if the present food is any indication of how bad the food was then, I for one believe the story completely.

So New Mexico Tech is an acquired taste. It is not for everyone and it is exactly where some people, such as me, belong.