Yay first thread; Congrats to all admitted and future admitted!

[differential]

What kind of bike do you recommend? Does the cold do anything to the bikes? Is there a theft problem? etc

[Olo]

There has indeed been a theft problem... whatever kind of bike you get, get a GOOD LOCK.

[molliebatmit]

My advice is to get a cheap bike. You won't need one with lots of bells and whistles anyway.

My dorm had a bike storage room inside, so the winter wasn't much of a problem. I'm not sure how many of the dorms have storage rooms.

[Pandora]

What's the stereotype for each dorm, more specific that the "hippie East Campus" vs. "normal West Campus" ones? Although I know that the culture of each dorm varies significantly, what is the general culture?

[mootmom]

You'll hear tons and tons about this subject as the summer approaches. Search the main MIT forum for past threads to get some ideas, but be prepared for lots of opinion. (Also go through the past Admissions blog entries related to Residential life here. They go back through May of '05 so you'll read a variety of thoughts on the subject.)

If you matriculate you'll get the i3 DVD over the summer (i3 = Interactive Intro to the Institute, I think) with videos from each dorm that give you some idea what the residential culture in each is like -- some of those are available online if you poke around a bit. You really do need to go to CPW and explore, and then explore again during Dorm Rush (if that's what it's being called these days) to really figure out where you feel most comfy, regardless of what the stereotypes tell you.

[molliebatmit]

There's a long thread on dorms from last year here. I wrote a quick blurb on each dorm in the thread, which emphatically should NOT be taken as the final word on anything.

[courtjestr19]

this is so exciting! well, almost as much as the confetti inside the tube :-)

[stasterisk]

hippie east campus, *normal* west campus?

*very, very* reduced. Wait for CPW, i3, etc. Believe me, you have quite a while to wait

In the mean time.. http://web.mit.edu/life/category/lg.html#links

[dally]

Also here are the i3 videos from last year. That particular one is for Senior House, but you can get to the others by substituting "burton-conner" or "random", etc, into the url.

[joml88]

Mollie's descriptions in that thread are pretty good, but let me add some things:

East Campus: Largest concentration of hackers. I'm talking about the kind of hackers who put stuff on the Great Dome and turn Stata into Waldo. It has a very nice location in that it's right on campus. It's very popular and hard to get into after freshman year as not many people leave it once they're there. I'm pretty sure you won't get a single as a Freshman.
Simmons: This is my dorm, so I know quite a bit about it. Most people think of Simmons as a quiet dorm, which is pretty accurate. We have a dining hall (5-8 pm) and a late night cafe (9pm-1am). There are a bunch of lounges where students can hang out and study. The housemasters and GRT's are very nice. For example, this week is exam week and the housemasters are putting together breakfast each morning for the whole dorm to stop by and grab in the morning. The major drawbacks of the dorm are:

(1) It's isolated from the other dorms (we're surrounded by parking lots -.-).

(2)They're doing construction on Vassar Street for the next couple of years which starts at like 8 a.m. I'm on the 9th floor and am a heavy sleeper so it doesn't really bother me. But it apparently some people...

(3) Being forced into the dining plan. Though, about 1/3 of the dorms force you into the dining plan.

On the other hand, if you live in the sponge you don't really have to look at it when you leave for classes in the morning or whatnot. There are many annoying things annoying about the design of the building. I could go on for a while about things that should have been done differently when building the dorm (like not having Steven Holl as the architect...).

[stasterisk]

1) not true about east campus. Less than half of freshmen in EC get doubles. I have a single. There are more freshmen singles than doubles on my hall.

[joml88]

Ah, I stand corrected. So are they singles because they're too small to be doubles? East Campus is pretty popular so I wouldn't expect there to be singles IF they could be made into doubles.

[Olo]

I like to think of the dorms as being on a scale with "Freedom from" on one end and "Freedom to" on the other (anyone read Handmaid's Tale?).

I think it would look something like this:

-- McCormick (ultimate "freedom from"... no boys, very few parties, very active
| judiciary committee)
|
-- Next House
|
-- New House
|
|
-- MacGregor
|
-- Burton-Conner
|
-- Baker
|
-- Bexley
|
-- East Campus
|
-- Senior House

I don't know where to place Simmons or Random.

As far as dorm experience goes, I have spent a fair amount of time in a variety of dorms (Senior House, East Campus, Macgregor, Baker, Bexley..). I ended up choosing to live in Senior House because of the phenomenal freedom the residents share. A week ago, the guy living next to me lit a match and threw it into a trashcan and we had a bonfire in his room. Pretty much anything goes in Senior House. I think the stereotype is that we're the gay/druggie dorm, which is just not true. Senior House isn't so much anarchistic as it is apathetic... the basic philosophy is that you do what you want as long as you don't interfere with other people's happiness... I think the same philosophy applies in East Campus, though to a lesser extent of freedom. EC is a cool place.

It's also very necessary to mention that where exactly in the dorm you live has a HUGE impact... some dorms vary DRASTICALLY floor-to-floor (Burton Conner, East Campus, and Macgregor come to mind).

[stasterisk]

The singles aren't exceptionally small - there are some huge rooms and some.. more cozy rooms. Nothing like the coffins in random or mccormick, for instance.