MIT notes that it has never awarded an honorary degree, and that the only way to receive an MIT diploma is to earn it. In addition, it does not award athletic scholarships, ad eundem degrees, nor Latin honors upon graduation — the philosophy is that the honor is in being an MIT graduate.

MIT faculty and students pride themselves on pure intellectual ability and achievement, and while grade inflation has run rampant at other elite colleges, MIT professors often say that they grade with "all the letters of the alphabet". Due to these academic pressures, MIT culture is characterized by a love-hate relationship . The informal motto of the school is IHTFP  ("I hate this fucking place," although some jocularly render it as "I have truly found paradise"). The wide acceptance of this motto is shown by its (inconspicuous) incorporation in the design of the class ring  of some graduating classes.

The school has a powerful anti-authoritarian ethos in which it is believed that one's social status should be determined by raw intellectual prowess rather than by social class or organizational position. Other beliefs that are strongly held by people within the school are that information should be widely disseminated and not held secret, and that truth is a matter of empirical reality rather than the result of popular belief or management directive. Many of the values of the Institute have influenced the hacker ethic. The term "hacker" and much of hacker culture originated at MIT, starting with the TMRC and MIT AI Lab in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Resident hackers have included Richard Stallman and professors Gerald Jay Sussman and Tom Knight. At MIT, however, the term "hack" has multiple meanings. "To hack" can mean to physically explore areas (often on-campus, but also off) that are generally off-limits such as rooftops and steam tunnels. "Hack" as a noun also means an elaborate practical joke (see the MIT Hack Gallery ), and not just a clever technical feat. The best hacks are humorous technical feats. The most famous hacks have been the balloon at the Harvard / Yale Football Game and The Great Dome Police Car Hack. See also hack (technology slang) and roof and tunnel hacking.

Traditionally, the appearance of a new issue of Voo Doo, the MIT humor magazine, was accompanied by some sort of hack by the staff, the most memorable of which was probably the landing of a helicopter within the Great Court, from which emerged a person in a gorilla suit who ran into Building 10, grabbed a copy of the new issue, and ran back out to the helicopter which then left. The FAA expressed its displeasure over the failure to file a correct flight plan within a heavily trafficed area with heavy fines. The John F. Kennedy assassination occurred on a Voo Doo-release Friday. Many students discounted early word-of-mouth news of the event, suspecting it of being a Voo Doo stunt; Voo Doo's taste, discretion, and political leanings in 1963 made this at least conceivable.

The dormitories tend to be extremely close-knit, and the Institute provides live-in graduate student tutors and faculty housemasters who have the dual role of both helping students and monitoring them for medical or health problems. There is a distinct difference in culture between the dormitories on the east side of campus, where people tend to be more "hippie-ish" and the dormitories on the west side of campus, where people tend to be more "preppie-ish." Random Hall, living up to its name, is on the north side of campus, and Bexley Hall, in ironic juxtaposition to its "far-out" culture, is located centrally. Within each housing unit, there are often distinctive subcultures on each floor or entry. A great many MIT students live in fraternities and independent living groups; however, after an alcohol-related death in the late 1990s, MIT decided that all freshmen must live in Institute housing.

Despite the disdain that many MIT graduates profess for academic tradition, a very large number of them proudly wear an MIT class ring, which is large, heavy, distinctive, and easily recognized from a considerable distance. Originally created in 1929, the undergraduate ring design varies slightly from year to year to reflect the unique character of the MIT experience for that class but always features a three-piece design, with the MIT seal and the class year each appearing on a separate shank, flanking a massive bezel bearing an image of a beaver. Its official name is the "Standard Technology Ring", but its colloquial name is far more well known—the "Brass Rat". Traditionally, the ring is worn with the beaver facing inwards until graduation, then turned the other way; or, as the unofficial folklore puts it, "While you're an undergrad, the beaver shits on you; after you graduate, the beaver shits on the world". Graduate degree rings follow a standard design.

In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published The Hidden Curriculum, in which he argues that a mass of unstated assumptions and requirements dominates MIT students' lives and inhibits their ability to function creatively. Snyder contends that these unwritten regulations often outweigh the "formal curriculum"'s effect, and that the situation is not unique to MIT.

MIT has a very broad student athletics program, having 42 varsity-level sports to boast of. MIT's sports teams are called the Engineers; their mascot since 1914 being a beaver, "nature's engineer". (Or sometimes: "The beaver is the engineer among animals—MIT students are the animals among engineers.") They participate in the NCAA's Division III, the New England Women and Men's Athletic Conference, and the New England Football Conference. They fielded several dominant intercollegiate Tiddlywinks teams through 1980, winning national and world championships[3] .

MIT has its own student-run radio station, WMBR.