MIT Housing for Dummies

Colleges & Universities Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Don’t pick MacGregor based off the fact that they’re mostly singles. Pick whatever dorm based off personality =DD. Seriously, I can’t emphasize that enough. (That said, if MacGregor fits your personality, go for it! They’re pretty awesome…)</p>

<p>Also, the no roommate thing - I didn’t have a roommate freshman year either, I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. EC is mostly singles, so people aren’t in their rooms a whole lot - you just wander to the lounge if you want to be social, and then when you feel like killing the world (or something) you just shut your door =D</p>

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<p>How do students get room assignments after dorm rush and floor rush? Do you just walk around the rooms and yell, “Dibs!” in one that you like?</p>

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<p>No, they are assigned to you, at least in East Campus. After floor rush, you turn in your preferences (as to what floor you want) and the next morning your room assignment will be posted. (Frosh don’t really have much choice in the <em>actual</em> rooms as the sophomores, juniors, and seniors pick their rooms at the end of the year.)</p>

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<p>

I definitely don’t feel that way, but I’m not the roommate type at all – I’m a little finicky and compulsive, and I don’t think I would have handled having a roommate all that well. </p>

<p>But I certainly wasn’t isolated – my next-door neighbor was also a freshman, and we considered ourselves roommates who lived in different rooms. We spent most of our time at home with our doors open, either in the hallway or in one room or the other, and we each basically had permission to barge into the other’s room at any time. </p>

<p>For what it’s worth, I do agree that getting a single shouldn’t be anybody’s first priority, much like prestige shouldn’t be anybody’s first priority when looking at colleges. But if you like MacGregor (or any of the other dorms that have lots of singles for freshmen), then by all means get psyched about having a single.</p>

<p>rainynightstarz, I didn’t mean to bang on you for the view comment. :slight_smile: I was sort of teasing, but it is probably the biggest A-Entry pet peeve during in-house rush.</p>

<p>

So I’ll elaborate on what Piper said. This is specifically for MacGregor, but I’m sure other dorms have similar mechanisms.</p>

<p>Upperclassmen pick their rooms at the end of the preceding school year, so only some certain number of rooms are open in each suite for freshmen. There are rules regarding the gender composition of each suite – some suites are designated single-sex, so all of the freshmen in those suites have to be the appropriate gender, and in mixed-sex suites, there have to be at least 2 members of each gender (i.e. you can have 3/3 and 4/2 and 2/4, but not 5/1 or 1/5). So each room can be somewhat restricted by gender.</p>

<p>Once the entry gets the list of people they’re getting, the entry chair sits down with the house rooming chair and they assign freshmen to rooms based on where they think each person will fit in the best. (For example, my next-door “roommate” and I weren’t next door to each other by accident – we were deliberately put next to each other because the entry chair thought we’d like each other.)</p>

<p>I think most of the dorms probably do this similarly, where upperclassmen assign freshmen to open rooms based on both issues like gender balance and also where they feel a certain person will be happiest.</p>

<p>EDIT:

It actually caused a lot of drama when it was introduced my junior year (the year I was rush chair, yay), because the previous system benefited the popular entries, and the popular entries howled when it was changed.</p>

<p>Under the previous system, which was done manually in rounds, each entry got the preference sheets of all the freshmen who had ranked them first, chose the people they wanted, and returned the sheets of people they didn’t want. As you can imagine, the entries which had a lot of people rank them first made out like bandits, because they got to explicitly pick every single person they wanted. The more unpopular entries couldn’t fill their entries with people who had ranked them first, and had to fill the entry with people who had ranked them second… third… seventh. Under the algorithm, the entries have much less say in who they get, which is probably better for the house as a whole. (As I’ve previously mentioned, I lived in two of the “popular” entries, so I howled with the rest of them when the system changed. :))</p>

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<p>That’s only true at EC. EVERY dorm has a different system. In BC, after you turn in your preferences, you’re assigned to a floor. Then the floor works out where everyone lives in whatever system they want. The frosh are obviously limited to the open rooms, since the upperclassman have already moved in, but for example on my floor, the frosh basically get together and discuss amongst themselves who is rooming with who in which suite. If there’s disagreement, it’s resolved over rock/paper/scissors. Actually.</p>

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<p>Ah, interesting, thanks for correcting me =P The difference probably exists because of the suite situation vs. one long floor. Particular rooms in EC don’t determine who you spend your time around because there’s just one big lounge.</p>

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<p>Lol, another MacGregor question, though residents of other dorms may want to answer as well: who cleans the kitchens and bathrooms?</p>

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<p>The dorm cleaning staff cleans the bathrooms and the lounges and vacuums the floors. </p>

<p>Kitchens have to be cleaned by suite residents. In practice, some suites are very clean and always have clean dishes and never any past-expiration-date food, etc., while other suites… have other priorities. :slight_smile: It’s up to each suite to decide how to deal with those issues.</p>

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<p>Do all dorms have cleaning staff? EC does too. (I think bathrooms in Simmons are cleaned by residents, though… but not sure.)</p>

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<p><em>whew</em> That’s relieving. My friend at NYU was relating to me his suitemate bathroom-cleaning woes the other day (there are 4 people who are supposed to switch off cleaning each week, but he’s the only one who ever does it so the bathroom only gets cleaned once every 4 weeks. =/) and it kind of grossed me out. (He also related to me all the problems he’s had with his roommate, which, though it probably shouldn’t, pushes me towards MacGregor as a top choice.)</p>

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<p>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. :)</p>

<p>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. <em>shrugs</em> That being said, I do think that learning to live with your roommate(s) is part of life.</p>

<p>(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.)</p>

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<p>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</p>

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

<p>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.</p>

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<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

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

<p>Honestly? I barely noticed. Ha! </p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>But I’m just weird like that.</p>

<p>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?</p>

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<p>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.</p>

<p>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)</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

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<p>LOL.</p>

<p>I haven’t visited Baker besides during rush. I should fix that =D.</p>

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<p>Since the 2009 housing lottery is now in full swing, I thought I’d ask some questions to help me choose.</p>

<p>Which one(s) is the most sexually-open house(s)?
(Immature, but hey other people think this too!)</p>

<p>Which ones have dining programs?</p>

<p>Which ones let you modify your dorm (which ones let you paint, which ones let you make whole structures)?</p>

<p>I hear that entries/floors in say dorms like BC tend to be very tightknit rather than say Baker, which is really social throughout the entirety of the dorm. Can someone elaborate on that?</p>

<p>What’s the stereotype of the “antisocialness” of macgregor?</p>

<p>And I think my top two choices right now is first baker then bc. Pros and cons of each?</p>

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<p>I don’t mean to be obtuse, but what exactly do you mean by “sexually open”? Very generally speaking, more east campus residents are in nontraditional relationships and more west campus residents are in traditional relationships, but at MIT you can pretty much do what you want – people aren’t too judgmental anywhere.</p>

<p>I think all of the dorms allow you to paint your room, but some will require you to paint your room back to Insititute white by the end of the year.</p>

<p>The stereotype of the antisocialness of MacGregor is that residents lock themselves in their rooms all day and never socialize. It’s patently untrue. At least in the entries where I lived, people were likely to spend their waking hours hanging out/eating/talking/watching TV in the lounges or hallways, or else doing homework in their rooms with the door open.</p>

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<p>‘Allowed to paint your room’ is kind of a flexible phrase, depending on where you’re living. In EC and Senior Haus, for example, murals are a big part of our hall decorations, and our house manager will save rooms with particularly interesting artwork, regardless if they’re freshman rooms or not. In Baker and MacGregor, the rooms are mostly brick, so you won’t have a whole lot to paint. I’m not sure if McCormick lets you paint rooms, either.</p>

<p>In general, older dorms will have more flexibility in terms of what you can paint / build / do (EC, Senior Haus, Burton-Conner, Random etc.). The newer dorms have nicer facilities, but you can’t do as much with the buildings.</p>

<p>As far as ‘sexually open’ goes, if you’re looking for the dorm where the girls / boys are the easiest, that’s pretty ridiculous. You shouldn’t sleep with your dorm mates anyway because it causes drama. If you’re concerned about being judged due to your sexual orientation, I haven’t heard of anywhere being an issue, although in general, the east side of campus tends to have more deviants than the west side does - cultural, sexual, and otherwise.</p>