An answer posted on Quora by good friend Michael who is finishing up his Senior year at MIT:

What is it like to go through MIT without impostor syndrome?

I will be perfectly honest here.

My time at MIT was without a doubt the greatest experience of my life up until now, but it certainly wasn’t without its challenges. It’s an odd feeling to come here freshman year and suddenly be immersed in a community of people who have accomplished ridiculously impressive things and many of whom are lightyears smarter than you are. It’s very humbling.

However, I never had Impostor Syndrome. Now, that’s not to say that I haven’t had my fair share of feeling inadequate, because I definitely have (when you’re handed back your first chemical engineering exam, and you scored in the low 30s, that will definitely take your ego down a peg or two).

But I never felt like I didn’t belong here. Throughout my four years here I was blessed to have an incredibly supportive family back home and an equally supportive community of friends here. They have been an amazing support base, and I don’t think I would have made it through four years here without them. Whenever I failed miserably on an exam or felt awful staying up into the early morning finishing a pset, they were there to cheer me on. And that made all the difference in the world.

But I realize that not everyone here has as incredible a support base to fall back on, and that Impostor Syndrome is a very real thing at MIT. My advice to those suffering from Impostor Syndrome would be this:

The cure for Impostor Syndrome is not to do better in your classes, or to publish more papers, or to get that coveted internship. To feel that you belong here, it’s all about the people that you surround yourself with. Find yourself an incredible group of friends here who will just refuse to let you feel bad about yourself, and rally behind you no matter how you score on that ChemE test. Friends like this aren’t easy to come by, but they are absolutely worth the time and effort you invest to find them – orders of magnitude more than that pset.