ask-paul

Simmons bathrooms are personal, so residents (usually 2 per bathroom, sometimes 3...occasionally 4) clean the bathrooms themselves. However, since it's only 2-4 people using them, it's really not a big deal. My roommate and I almost never had to clean ours.

la montagne: Roommate problems are pretty rare at MIT, especially since you have many opportunities to pick your own if you want to. The biggest drama I witnessed my year is when two of my friends decided to room together but ended up in a triple with someone else who didn't really fit their personalities. *shrugs* That being said, I do think that learning to live with your roommate(s) is part of life.

(In a broader sense, learning to live with the people around you is part of life - whether those are people on your floor, in your suite, on your hall, or in your fraternity. The dynamics of being a good roommate and being a good floor-mate are not that different.)

PiperXP

Though it is absolutely lovely to have a quiet room to sleep at night, or even to get away from people if you just can't stand being around people all the time =P

jessiehl

Roommate drama is rare, and, from what I have seen, tends to get fixed pretty easily.

I came in convinced that I didn't want a roommate - I'm an introverted type who likes some privacy and personal space. I was temped on 1st East, and I had a roommate there who was the same way. In the few days that we were temped together, we discovered that we really enjoyed each other's company, and we had about the same level of introversion, so we didn't irritate each other/knew when to leave each other alone. And we wanted similar things in a hall. So we became roommates voluntarily, stapling our papers during hall rush. We spent a year happily as roommates (though there were many empty rooms on the hall that year and we could have de-doubled), then parted happily for singles.

molliebatmit

I've actually heard quite a few roommate drama stories, although they tend to be from triples and quads and rarely from doubles. Still, I think the MIT roommate drama tends to be milder than the drama at other schools, at least if you go by the horror stories that pop up in the Parents' Forum.

I don't think anybody should pick MacGregor because of the singles, but I don't think anybody should feel that he or she has to have a roommate just because that's part of the so-called "college experience", either.

LauraN

My roommate moved her boyfriend into our double without telling me, effectively turning it into a co-ed triple.

Honestly? I barely noticed. Ha!

When I actually noticed (which happened one day when I came back from class and the floor was covered in boxes of his stuff that had just been moved from his previous living arrangement) I was pretty unhappy. But it was like 2 weeks before the end of the semester, so I decided to just deal with it.

But I'm just weird like that.

My GRTs were totally awesome, and helped me with a couple of really sticky situations, and I know they helped some others as well. Don't overlook them. I think it's actually kind of better that they're grad students, because there's not the awkwardness of someone your own age trying to tell you to be nicer to your roommate, you know?

mitsoph

A lot has been said about MacGregor and EC, so I figured I would add some things about a dorm that I know fairly well. I lived in Baker my freshman year (before moving into a fraternity). I loved it there. Not everything you hear about it is true (except for the good things, of course). I found the people there to be very sociable and open to hanging out with everyone, both academically and in social settings. There is an "open-door" policy which basically tries to get people to always have their door open when they are in so that people can feel free to stop in and say hi and hang out for a bit.

Baker also tends to have a lot of outgoing people who like to party and let loose, so if you like that, it is a good place for you. As a side effect of this, most of the guys who live there as freshmen join fraternities and move out so there tends to be a lot of freshmen and female upperclassmen here. This I think is a great thing for freshmen but something to think about if you want to live on campus all four years in one place (which I don't think you need to know now)

Hope this helps.

PiperXP

LOL.

I haven't visited Baker besides during rush. I should fix that =D.