Quote:
ownership of Intellectual Property developed by faculty, students, staff, and others participating in MIT programs, including visitors, with the significant use of funds or facilities administered by MIT will vest with MIT.
From my reading of the policy.. it sounds like if you accept this small sum (1-5K), MIT gets the IP rights to everything you make. Good deal for MIT.
If they own the name (trademark) of your project; the content on your website and marketing materials; copyright on your code; patents... you're basically working for MIT for $1k.
Also, regarding the pledge: "This pledge to give back is a personal choice and not binding and funding will not be conditional on a student signing a pledge." (https://sandbox.mit.edu/apply-3/) It sounds like a pretty reasonable program.
But an engineering startup ? definitely not.
First of all, it's not like every participant gets 25K. Getting that level of funding would take some serious doing. It looks like 1-5K is more likely. Additionally, there are milestones, meetings, course requirements, and a whole lot of work required to get any significant funding. This might not be so bad for many early stage startups, but as a full time MIT student, taking on the extra workload is daunting.
In my opinion, it's not worth it. I am paying ~30K PER SEMESTER to be at this place, so I'm doing my best to focus all of my attention on learning my craft and jumpstarting my career. 25K sounds nice and is definitely nothing to scoff at, but in the broad scale it's a drop in the bucket, and requires getting all tied up in MIT's red tape (and also "Students who receive +$5K in funding will be encouraged to give back to the Fund or MIT"). There are easier ways to go about getting 1 to 25K in strings attached seed funding as an MIT student. The mentorship is potentially a good benefit, but I already receive mentorship from my professors.
I'm sure there are some students who might benefit from this, but I'm not convinced.