While his classmates spend their time crunching probability equations, MIT senior Erik Snowberg is playing with some odds of his own.

With one more semester left to finish at MIT, he's decided to run for Cambridge City Council.

"The whole point of this campaign is to get students to vote," Snowberg said. "Basically I have ten volunteers here, and we're going to go door to door."

Snowberg said he is running for the council to give a voice to his peers in a city made up of one-quarter students.

"I basically started out at the beginning of last year trying to get students to vote," he said. "Myself and another student did some research and found out that the only way to get students to vote was to give them something to vote for."

At that time, Snowberg said that he had no intention of running for the spot himself. But when no one stepped forward, Snowberg decided to give it a try.

Still, City Councillor Sheila T. Russell said that though students have run in the past, they do not have the same impact on the campaign as do incumbents or other more politically active candidates.

"This has happened before. One student ran for mayor many years ago," she said. "He got maybe three hundred votes."

Russell said that though students may have good intentions, they do not have the breadth of knowledge about Cambridge issues that other citizens might.

"[Cantabrigians] are familiar with the issues and the environment. I don't think that someone who is living in Cambridge temporarily should try to make a huge impact on the city," Russell said.

"I wonder why he's doing it," she added.

But Snowberg said he thinks that knowledge of traditional Cambridge issues is not necessarily important for election, though he said that he is familiar with matters such as rent control.

"You don't need to know those things to be on the council," Snowberg said.

Snowberg said his campaign will focus on keeping the MBTA open later, improving bike safety, and increasing communication between residents and students.

Even with his own agenda, some councillors said they doubt Snowberg's campaign will transform city government.

"He would probably bring up different issues [than what we deal with now]," Russell said. "But he would not have a huge impact."