Word:
LyX (the graphical frontend to LaTeX):
For those who wish to write their theses in LyX, you can use Dr. Mike Short provides this complete example as a template. Keep the organization of the document the same, edit "cover.tex" by hand, and otherwise replace the template content with your own. Then you will have a complete document, formatted per MIT's regulations.
LaTeX:
Or you can just write Latex code using any text editor. I Lulu Li recommend taking advantage of the command \newcommand{command}{definition}. This allows you to save time on some commonly used definitions. See examples at here, or run:
...
In particular, the mitthesis.cls file (link here) is what I Lulu used for my MS thesis (link). You should not need to update anything and use it directly.touch mitthesis.cls at all, and the master.tex is pretty self-explanatory.