<p>I wonder what MIT’s policy toward frats would be if they had enough dorms to house the students.</p>
<p>^I think that if the administration had a magic wand, they’d do away with FSILGs and have everybody live in randomized housing. But they can’t do that in practice, because the student body would make their lives miserable.</p>
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<p>I think referring to “the administration” as a bloc is usually misleading (though frequently done) when it comes to student life. It’s a bunch of entities, some of which have opposing interests and/or viewpoints. To do something dramatic, either someone with the authority to move unilaterally on that issue really has to like the idea , or there needs to be a critical mass of admins in relevant positions who want it. Plus the logistics of it have to be workable.</p>
<p>Also, it’s not just (and probably not even primarily) the student body. I suspect that a lot of alum donations would dry up if they got rid of FSILGs and went to randomized housing.</p>
<p>I can partially see why they might look a little askance at FSILGs, but might I ask why they don’t like the current non-randomized housing? When I was researching colleges to apply to, the ability to choose your own living group with its own culture was extremely appealing.</p>
<p>^^^ I get the impression that it would be easier for the administration if all the ‘problem children’ (the loud ones who protest their policies, who have explosions in the courtyard, who stick stuff on the Dome and throw the best parties - aka <em>my</em> side of campus) were all spread out - we might be quieter then.</p>
<p>since when has sticking stuff on the Dome been a problem? I mean… I was under the impression that that was… accepted?</p>
<p>Am I understanding that the only way to not have frats is to have dorm housing? (Why single the frats I am not clear)</p>
<p>What about only offering guranteed housing for say 2 -3 yrs of undergrad–?</p>
<p>With a limited meal plan as is–and so many cooking etc…its not a traditional dorm meal plan as other universities handle it (correct me if I am wrong–just going by posts and the mit web pages)</p>
<p>Can’t various neighborhood buildings just be handed down from group to group?</p>
<p>so whats the big dif?</p>
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<p>That…is what the FSILGs already do. They own houses in Cambridge or Boston. But there are only so many houses that fit 40 people to go around.</p>
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<p>Ew. I would have been distraught if I had been kicked out of my home, the place that was the center of my support system, halfway or three-quarters of the way through my MIT career. For most students, living groups aren’t just places where you sleep and park your stuff.</p>
<p>Beyond that, I would not have been happy to be kicked off <em>campus</em> either. Living on campus was part of what made MIT feel like it was mine. Obviously not everyone agrees - the people who live in Boston FSILGs, for instance, clearly feel vested in the MIT community despite not living on site - but what would be the point of shafting the people who do?</p>
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<p>Again, we need to be careful about treating the administration as a bloc on student life issues, because it very much is not.</p>
<p>Frankly, a major reason that <em>some</em> admins don’t like the housing system is that people tend to like what they’re used to. Most admins didn’t go to MIT, so they experienced a different system in college, and most worked somewhere else before MIT, so they got used to whatever the system was there.</p>
<p>Another major reason is that some of them think it would be better for future donations to build class loyalty among students. Right now, class loyalty is vastly outgunned by living group loyalty.</p>
<p>This article is more than 10 years old now, but it is still relevant (also I like it because I know so many of the people featured :)).</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/99/05/27/MIT.html]MIT[/url”>MIT]MIT[/url</a>]</p>
<p>^Yay, the article about Matt’s fedora!</p>
<p>Another reason that it would be difficult to guarantee only 2-3 years of housing at MIT is that Boston’s rental market is incredibly expensive, and is already fairly saturated with college students and graduate students. In addition, many of the cheaper studenty neighborhoods are not convenient to MIT.</p>
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Not least because they’re multi-million-dollar properties due to their location (particularly the Back Bay-located ones).</p>
<p>Another bad point about MIT is, with absolutely no effort, one can become anonymous, at least that’s the way it was 30+ years ago when I was there. Especially if one is in a large department (EE, physics). Many classes are absolutely huge. My first 3 physics classes (8.01, 8.02, 8.03) had 300 students. My organic chem class (5.41) was in the largest lecture hall (26-100) and students sat in the isles. My 2 intro economics classes and bio class (7.01, taught boringly by a nobel laureate) had 200+ students. For 3 years, my only personal contact with profs was on registration day when my advisor signed my course selection card. And that 5 minute meeting was the extent of his interest in me. For that reason, my high school senior daughter is now applying to much smaller and friendlier colleges (no universities). MIT was certainly not TV’s “Cheers” where “everyone knew your name”. However, having MIT on my CV has certainly helped my career, and I am proud to have graduated from there. MIT was what I thought I wanted back then, though.</p>
<p>At MIT, you will default to anonymous. This will change as soon as you seek out your interests. While I will probably not be known to the entire MIT community, I nonetheless get a “Cheers” mentality from my subcultures of the MIT community. I, for instance, can walk onto my hall, the Rainbow Lounge, my service group’s office/lounge, etc, and be greeted by people where everyone knows my name. While I cannot say I am known by everyone at my school (like someone at $smallUniversity), I doubt the numbers of my close interactions are different. I simply have more options to what my “Cheers” can be :)</p>
<p>This doesn’t necessarily hold true for every large university. For a while, I attended Calstate LA, which does not have nearly as strong a student group culture and hardly has a living group culture at all (being a mostly commuter college). There, I did not develop any sense of overall community, though I did make a decent number of good friends.</p>
<p>Piper: I did not mention that I lived in a frat house and a varsity team, so I knew people there. But as to the profs, they were like on TV to me, and I was not alone in the feeling. But some people want that. Finding a prof for grad school rec’s was a challenge.</p>
<p>I personally don’t interact with my large-lecture profs - it’s true, effort will need to be made to get to know them. I know people who go to every office hour and stay after class and end up knowing profs quite well, and that works for them. My recommendations will likely come from professors I’ve UROP’d for rather than taken classes with, as I know them quite well.</p>
<p>I can’t necessarily speak for people in larger departments, as I was a double in biology and brain and cog sci (although biology is decently large) and my husband was in aerospace engineering, but neither of us had any problems getting to know professors or getting letters of recommendation for graduate school. </p>
<p>Actually, my husband still flies model airplanes with several of his former professors on a fairly regular basis.</p>
<p>There’s also ESG and Concourse for the first year, but I don’t know too much about them.</p>
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<p>By any chance did you take 8.01 in the fall of 1978? I took it in the fall of 1979, and was told by people a year ahead of me that 60% of the 8.01 students failed it in the previous fall. The professor made the course extremely difficult, and refused to reverse the grades she had given out.</p>
<p>FWIW, this may be an extreme situation. I don’t think 60% of the people failed it when I took it. I have heard of similar things at other schools.</p>
<p>believer: I graduated by the time you took 8.01. I don’t know if anyone failed when I took it, I just know that class ave was usually very low. I DID like 8.01. Lot’s of really cool demonstrations. I remember the demo with the hunter and the monkey in the tree. When he shoots, the monkey drops. We proved on the blackboard in 26-100 mathemetically that the bullet hit the monkey. Then he had a stuffed monkey that dropped from the ceiling when he fired a BB gun. It worked just like the equations. Really cool. French was the prof, I think. Next year’s class was better, though. I heard thet the cutest girl in the class streaked down the isle, courtsied to the prof, gave the prof a rose and then ran out the side door at the front! In 8.02 the prof asked for a volunteer to enter a steel cage; then he applied about a zillion volts (buzz, sparks) – no death, just like the equations and theory said. 8.03 was cool when the prof put a frozen hot dog into a huge box, he turned a dial, and the dog came out smoking and cooked. It was a new fangled contraption now called a “microwave oven”. Getting paper for the computer printers was always a problem, if you were lucky enough not to have to use a computer with punch cards (watch out climbing the stairs for fear of dropping them and mixing the order).</p>
<p>Streaked? 0.o</p>
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<p>Heh, my dad has told me this story - he was there at the time, though I don’t remember if he was actually in the relevant class.</p>
<p>“Although almost everyone in the class was used to getting 90+% on all work in high school, the class average grade on anything at MIT in the first year was usually more like 50 to 60% (and that was on a good day!). I still recall one of the first problems on my first physics (8.01) problem set handed out at the first class: How much material comes off of a car’s tire in each revolution? No other information was provided. I think no one in the entire class of 250+ students got it correct.”</p>
<p>Not that I want to demean anyone, but guys, please, we don’t need to dramatize the work done here at MIT :D. Seriously, intro physics at MIT is still intro physics, nothing ridiculous or out of the imagination. How you feel about intro classes depend a LOT on what you spent time doing in high school.</p>
<p>Let me clarify: If in high school you only did the hmwk assigned, didn’t try to challenge yourself with more difficult stuff (hard problems, look for harder textbooks to self-study, or didn’t have AP curriculum), then of course it’s gonna be tough. But if you come from Blair/Phillips Exeter/TJHSSM, challenged yourself by seeking extra resources or competed in olympiads, Freshman year at MIT ain’t that hard (you can’t take more than 4 classes 1st semester)… It’s sophomore year, and later when people start overloading with hard classes (Thermal Fluids Engineering, Thermodynamics, Quantum II/III, Software design, whatever…) that it gets tough.</p>
<p>So moral of the lesson, you can definitely prepare so that your freshman year at MIT will be a breeze. Remember to always challenge yourself, don’t be satisfied with just a “5” on an AP exam, after BS-ing through the course, coz you won’t be able to do so here (well, actually, sometimes :D, but it’s rare).</p>