<p>Any opinions/insights would be much appreciated.</p>
<p>They both suck. A lot.</p>
<p>You are going to have a hard time getting responses to this. Both are relatively small and less conveniently located than other houses, so few people other than the actual residents spend a lot of time in them. And of course few if any people will have been residents of both. What’s more, Maclean is “off the grid”, in that it doesn’t appear on most maps of campus because it is a block or two northwest of the area shown on the maps, and Breck is at the very southeastern corner of campus. They couldn’t be more inconvenient to one another. The residents eat in different dining halls, and they tend to use different public transportation. So most people who live in one of them are probably relatively unlikely to have friends in the other.</p>
<p>That said, my daughter lived in Maclean first year, and a high school friend of hers lived in Breck. Maclean was perfectly nice. The singles were pleasant, and there were lots of common areas for being social. Plus, my daughter and the woman across the hall were friends, and if they left their doors open it was like being roommates with private bedrooms. So it wasn’t isolating at all, except for the fact that no one who didn’t live there knew where it was. Maclean is a former retirement home, so it has an incredible institutional kitchen that residents can use if they pay a small fee per quarter – far cooler than the little apartment-like kitchens most students have access to.</p>
<p>Maclean gets a fair number of jocks, because it’s the dorm with guaranteed singles that’s really close to Ratner Gymnasium. But it’s a longish hike from there to the Midway or anything in South Campus.</p>
<p>I don’t know that much about Breck. My daughter’s friend liked it fine, and stayed there for two years. It’s prettier than Maclean. They’re both about the same size. Breck has doubles as well as singles. I think Breck has single-sex floors; Maclean has single-sex bathrooms, but men and women live on the same hallways. Breck is right next to International House, and very near the nicer (and pricier) parts of Hyde Park. One really great thing about it is that it’s right next to a Metra train station, so if you time things right you can leave your room and be in the middle of downtown Chicago in 15-20 minutes, a trip that takes everyone else a lot longer. (From Maclean, a trip downtown means a bus and another bus or the El, and you would plan on needing more than an hour.) The Metra costs a little more than other ways of getting downtown, though.</p>
<p>Because most students don’t visit them, and may not know anyone in them, they tend to get treated like the Other in the imagination of first-years living in the larger, more centrally located dorms. There is lots of folklore about how odd and introverted they are, full of “housecest” and anti-social behavior. As far as I could tell, there was nothing true about that, or nothing more true than it would have been about any other Chicago dorm.</p>
<p>OP, JHS provides excellent information (as always; JHS, did you know you have a fan base here on CC 
)? Try using the Advanced Search function on the U Chicago part of CC, entering words like “housing” and “residential” and “dorm” in the thread title. You will get more information than you you might even want. Good luck.</p>
<p>As a former resident of Breck (though still a breckie at heart), I can share that view. ;-)</p>
<p>Overall, I quite liked the experience. I lived there my first two years.</p>
<p>First on getting to campus. The 170 picks up a half a block away and will get you to campus in about 5 minutes. In the mornings, it runs every ten minutes. At night, you have your choice of the central and south routes (the only dorm that has multiple shuttles go by it…other than Snitchcock and Max West I suppose). But even if you decide to walk, it is only ten minutes and you have the beauty of the midway to walk by. Get yourself a bike, and the time is easily got down to half. It is also in a handful of dorms that has the easiest access to downtown being 2 minutes from the 6 stop and thirty seconds from the Metra. And many take the opportunity to get downtown much more often then what I hear in other dorms.</p>
<p>Now for the single sex floors. I guess it is there for people who want it, but in practice it doesn’t really work. People wander all the time and I would say outside of the early morning hours, it would be rare to not find a female on the second floor or a male on the third.</p>
<p>Now for the common areas. Breck has three lounges (up from one or two in other dorms). And they finally got things like new furniture in all of them. The house also bought a new flat screen tv. The place is old, however, and there are signs of such. One day they may choose to repair the roof where people used to enjoy picnics and BBQ’s. (The only dorm that used to do so that I am aware of.) Though this fabled tradition of the past, hasn’t been experienced for many a year. Also Breck has a rather large kitchen (with four ovens instead of one which from it comes so many wonderful baked goods shared with the house not always in the normal study breaks experienced by others).</p>
<p>The rooms. There is a nice mix of singles and doubles. For your second year, you will definitely have the choice of one or the other. There are also some much larger rooms which sometimes are available second year but more likely third or fourth.</p>
<p>But the most important thing is the people which I have found to quite love. There is the attitude that the place can feel pretty insular being farther from campus, but due to the walks to class and the dining halls, I have found people to bond more than in other houses. It is rare for me to walk into another dorm and see as many people in the house lounges working and/or having fun (not mutually exclusive at uchicago). And that community feel is Breck’s strongest point. Outside of a few houses (janotta and tufts comes to mind) it is rarely duplicated.</p>
<p>There are set backs though. Not being 2 minutes from class means you have to get up earlier than most for class. It also doesn’t have resident masters which brings a lot of delight in the larger dorms. And lastly, it definitely doesn’t have the feel of the newer dorms max and south (though some would claim this as a positive).</p>
<p>As for MacLean, I don’t know nearly as much. I have been in the dorms a few times and they definitely have similar features to breck with a large kitchen, multiple lounges, etc. The people I have met from there tend to be great people (though I have found that to be the experience in almost all dorms I have been in).</p>
<p>I’m haven’t read everyone’s response, nor am I going into depth in the matter, but I would recommend to STEER AWAY from the two. Maclean has the SMALLEST rooms on campus. And breck is one of those dorms that no one knows where the hell it even is. It is far from the center of campus, to my knowledge. Unless if you are a “more to yourself” type of person, I recommend Max/South/Pierce/BJ/Snellcock</p>
<p>I just went to Maclean today. It’s cozy, with single rooms and huge communal spaces that have things like a stage, and loads of sofas. There’s also an industrial sized kitchen. Students have painted the walls with quotes, comic book strips, and pictures - and the people who live there usually treasure privacy as much as they treasure community.
Maclean rooms aren’t particularly small (especially for singles!) and it’s a five minute walk from Pierce Dining Hall - a block north from Ratner.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m a little biased. I just think Maclean is so far away from everything…</p>
<p>The UChicago College Admissions tumblr just posted some good pics of Maclean along with a brief intro:</p>
<p>[UChicago</a> College Admissions](<a href=“http://uchicagoadmissions.■■■■■■■■■■/]UChicago”>http://uchicagoadmissions.■■■■■■■■■■/)</p>
<p><a href=“http://uchicagoadmissions.■■■■■■■■■■/post/20142953114/maclean-maclean-is-located-in-the-heart-of-hyde[/url]”>http://uchicagoadmissions.■■■■■■■■■■/post/20142953114/maclean-maclean-is-located-in-the-heart-of-hyde</a>
(direct link to page)</p>