<p>I was in Lloyd House at Caltech; I’m in Keble College at Oxford. You’re right, England’s institutional aversion to A/C is a little annoying. It’s been extremely sticky this past week. It happens to be quite nice just now, though, because it’s been raining for a couple of hours, so a nice cool breeze is coming in through the windows.</p>
<p>My impression is that single rooms house a greater percentage of the Caltech student body than the MIT student body, but I don’t really know. There are no single rooms for freshmen in the North Houses (Lloyd, Page, and Ruddock) but there are in the South Houses (Blacker, Fleming, Ricketts, Dabney). That said, I think choosing a house based on whether or not you might get a single room is a poor way to do it, but… that’s a different subject.</p>
<p>In any case, I really liked the system they have at Caltech for pairing up roommates. Basically, you do it yourself. I’m sure you’ve heard about Rotation and the process of choosing a house, during which you have a temporary rooming assignment–after that week, at least in my house (Lloyd) you got to choose your own room (drawing cards to determine the picking order) and your own roommate. I thought that the opportunity to choose my own roommate after having the chance to get to know my new classmates for awhile (more than two weeks, by that point) like that was a great thing, and it really wouldn’t have been possible at most schools. It worked out well for me and I ended up having the same roommate for next year as well.</p>
<p>I actually have a little article I wrote about the Caltech-vs.-MIT choice, which also confronted me a few years back. If you’re interested, you can read it at: <a href=“http://www.prepme.com/advice/mit-or-caltech.htm[/url]”>http://www.prepme.com/advice/mit-or-caltech.htm</a></p>
<p>However, what I always tell people is that the single most important thing you need to do to choose where you want to go is visit. Caltech and MIT are similar in many ways and different in others, but you don’t really get the full picture until you’ve been both places in person.</p>