<p>1) Will the new UG dorm (Ashdown) have its own house dining...curious...
(i.e like Baker/McCormick/Simmons)</p>
<p>2) ...another question that popped up as I was looking at the campus map was
how long it takes students in Burton-conner/Simmons to get to their Freshman
classes typically during the winter.... (how do they do it/walk/campus
bus....?)</p>
<p>3) how do the students living in those ILGs/Greek houses
in Brookline/Boston get to campus..... obviously they have more time
gone getting to classes and such, what is the tradeoff advantage? Is it
not more fun living on campus?</p>
<p>No doubt this and all prefrosh UG DORM questions will be answered at CPW/
Summer Video....just curious... :)</p>
<p>I lived at MacGregor, and I usually left the dorm twenty minutes before class was scheduled to begin -- and that was because a lot of my classes were in [E25[/url</a>]. Classes in the main part of campus, where most freshman classes are held, were about a ten minute walk or less.</p>
<p>There's a campus shuttle that runs in a loop from Kendall to 77 Mass Ave to MacGregor every 20 minutes, but it was faster to walk, and I didn't take the shuttle except for that one week every January when the wind chill was too low for me to bear.</p>
<p>I will be a little surprised if Ashdown has a dining hall, since I was under the impression that the rooms have kitchens. Generally dorms with lots of student kitchens don't have dining halls (MacGregor, Burton-Conner, EC, Random, etc) since students there often cook for themselves.</p>
<p>:) Thank you very much! :) (Thats really cool , how the shuttle gets updated
on that map- GPS data?)</p>
<p>Wow (10-20 minutes!). Did you find yourself coming back to your room
or using a library or some other place between classes (...see your room
only in the morning and late at night)?</p>
<p>Also, Can Freshman UG's stay at Ashdown/or one of the other non dining house based
dorms and opt to have dinner at (for example) McCormick/Baker/Simmons?</p>
<p>Freshmen who live in dorms without dining halls are allowed to eat at dorms with dining halls. Baker is a pretty popular place to have dinner, and I often see people who live in New or MacGregor eating at Next. </p>
<p>Speaking of which, I live in Next, and I either walk, bike, or take the Tech Shuttle depending on the weather, how lazy I feel, etc. I really don't mind the walk -- it gets me awake, and if it's cold enough, I'm actually happy to get indoors *in class<a href="where%20I%20belong">/i</a> sheltered from the elements.</p>
<p>:) KnightMair thats very helpful, Thanks! :)</p>
<p>So ... freshmen can basically eat at any of the dining houses in a week
or are they actually buying into a specific dining house plan? Also,
does dining imply only dinner or bfast and lunch...?</p>
<p>(for example, could I stay at Ashdown, visit Baker one night, McCormick
/Next another etc. ?)</p>
<p>I would not worry too much about Ashdown as it will take several years to to renovate it and make it ready for undergrads. </p>
<p>If you live in a house with a dining hall you have to buy the dining plan (dinner only) but you can eat at any of the other houses with dining as well as your own dorm. The dining plan gives you 50% off regular meal prices at all dining halls. You can grab breakfast or lunch at any number of places on campus but there is no subsidized plan or dorm facilities.</p>
<p>My D lives in Simmons and takes the shuttle which she tracks on her cell phone. Simmons also has a late night cafe which is great for study breaks.</p>
<p>
[quote]
1) Will the new UG dorm (Ashdown) have its own house dining...curious...
(i.e like Baker/McCormick/Simmons)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes. Definitely. This is in fact the one thing set in stone about Ashdown, much to the dismay of the student body. MIT is already losing money on every other dining hall. People don't like them and use them that much, and it would be so much better to just have kitchens on each floor (a la Macgregor, EC, Senior House, etc.). </p>
<p>
[quote]
2) ...another question that popped up as I was looking at the campus map was how long it takes students in Burton-conner/Simmons to get to their Freshman classes typically during the winter.... (how do they do it/walk/campus bus....?)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>At most 10 minutes, from what I hear.</p>
<p>
[quote]
3) how do the students living in those ILGs/Greek houses
in Brookline/Boston get to campus..... obviously they have more time
gone getting to classes and such, what is the tradeoff advantage? Is it
not more fun living on campus?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Depends on who you live with. MIT runs busses to every FSILG after 6:00PM, so it's not that bad.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wow (10-20 minutes!). Did you find yourself coming back to your room
or using a library or some other place between classes (...see your room
only in the morning and late at night)?
[/quote]
I didn't tend to have a "between classes", by design -- I would schedule my classes so I'd go straight from class to class, with an hour for lunch, then straight to my UROP lab, then straight home. But that was entirely by my choice, since I didn't like having useless time in my day. So generally I left my room at 8:40 AM and came back around 6:20 PM.</p>
<p>When my husband had breaks during his days (because he's not nearly as obsessed with efficiency as I am), he usually hung out in the aero/astro student lounge, which has couches and a hammock and also usually contained his friends and problem set buddies.</p>
<ol>
<li>Yes. The student body is infuriated and wishes that Hockfield would stop trying to make it into Yale.</li>
</ol>
<p>Any student, regardless of whether they are on Preferred Dining or not (unless you are in a dorm where you're required to buy in, I would not recommend it), can buy food at any Campus Dining facility.</p>
<ol>
<li>The upside is that they found a community that they like better off campus. It's that simple. It's not about "fun" on-campus vs. off, really, because everyone has a different idea of what's fun. It's about most people at MIT prioritizing having the best social support possible for themselves over anything else in making their living decisions, including convenience (though it's really nice, IMO, when the best social support for you happens to be in a convenient location).</li>
</ol>
<p>
[quote]
Lol, why is the student body against dorms with their own dining? I don't really understand what is infuriating about that...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The food is mediocre and overpriced, and more importantly, it's an unnecessary, restrictive thing. MIT students tend to distrust mandatory anything, and being part of Preferred Dining is mandatory if you live in a dorm with a dining hall. It's a misguided attempt by admins to impose "community" from the top down, when students are perfectly good at forming REAL communities themselves. Now, some people might WANT to be in Preferred Dining, and that's fine, but you can be in Preferred Dining without living in a dorm that requires it.</p>
<p>Also, if you're an FSILG frosh, it screws you over...most FSILGs have their own meal plans, that often ARE part of their real, homegrown community (as kitchen cooking is at other living groups, like much of Random Hall), and frosh in the relevant dorms are required to buy into both their FSILG's meal plan AND Preferred Dining.</p>
<p>W1 (not Ashdown, that was its grad dorm name and is going to be the name of the new grad dorm) had perfectly good kitchens when it was a grad dorm. Against the advice of the actual students on the committee/advisory group, when they turn it into an undergrad dorm they are going to rip out those kitchens and give it a dining hall instead. Such a waste.</p>
<p>FSILG = fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups -- people who live communally not in dorms. </p>
<p>there are a few more technicalities -- fraternities and sororities are governed by IFC (interfraternity council) and panhel respectively, and ILG is governed by ILG, but the important part is that these are living groups that live on or off-campus but not in dorms.</p>
<p>:) Jessiehl, Knightmair, Mollieb and Olo thank you for your posts! :)</p>
<p>I thought W1 is expected to be available starting '08-'09 for UGs
to move in and the reason why more people will be allowed to matriculate
this year. Will this not be the case?</p>
<p>Also, what does "room squatting allowed" in McCormick mean ( I noticed
that "squatting [was] not allowed" in any of the other dorms)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Lol, why is the student body against dorms with their own dining?
[/quote]
Why would the student body be for dining halls, particularly when they come hand-in-hand with a mandatory dining plan? Ugh.</p>
<p>EDIT: Consider also that using Tech Cash (which is the account into which you can put money and buy things on campus using your ID card) allows you to purchase food in actual restaurants near MIT. If you were adamant about not cooking for yourself, you could eat dinner every night at a restaurant or fast-food joint. If you were on a mandatory meal plan, you could still do that, but you'd be losing money as a result.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, what does "room squatting allowed" in McCormick mean ( I noticed that "squatting [was] not allowed" in any of the other dorms)
[/quote]
Squatting is staying in the temp dorm room that you're assigned during orientation. At all of the dorms except McCormick, even if you choose to remain in the dorm in which you're temped, you will have to move rooms.</p>
<p>Thanks for explaining about the dining thing - did not realize that dining halls came with MANDATORY dining plans... ugh is right. lol. </p>
<p>Random house sounds really cool! <em>I love cooking</em> <em>Maybe I will live there next year</em> Is it really hard to find time to cook for yourself at MIT though? I mean... is there really time for that?</p>
<p>Well, you might not have time to cook gourmet French meals every night. :)</p>
<p>Before I started dating my husband, I would usually make a big dish on Sunday afternoons and reheat it for dinner all week. After I started dating my husband, we cooked together most nights -- it goes a lot faster when there are more than two hands doing the cooking. (Because of this, many of our friends also buddied up to cook.)</p>
<p>And Random has the supermarket conveniently located directly behind it, so it's not even inconvenient to get groceries.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Random house sounds really cool! <em>I love cooking</em> <em>Maybe I will live there next year</em> Is it really hard to find time to cook for yourself at MIT though? I mean... is there really time for that?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Heh, "Random Hall". The legend is that it used to be called Random House, and then the publishers by the same name threatened to sue. I have no idea if there is any truth to that story.</p>
<p>Random Hall is a very cool place (I probably had more friends there than in any dorm except my own, EC), but you should make sure that you like the rest of its culture too before you decide you want to live there! If it's just the cooking you're after, there are several living groups that emphasize or are friendly to cooking, I just picked them as an example. For instance, in many of the cultural houses in New House, taking turns participating in cooking for the group is a precondition of living there, pika (a commune-style independent living group - their stereotype is hippie engineers) cooks communal dinners with vegan options at every meal, and most halls of East Campus have a large percentage of cookers (with the kitchens conveniently joining one of each hall's two lounges, encouraging social interaction in the kitchen area).</p>
<p>A lot of people find cooking a useful way to destress (I didn't - not a good enough cook for that :)). And a lot of cooking is group-based - either communal cooking like in the cultural houses, or voluntary groups of four of five friends who take turns cooking for the group of four or five, as is common in much of Random. If your living group has a kitchen but no cooking groups, and you want one, you can form one with your friends!</p>
<p>Students in Burton-Conner live in suites with kitchens. My freshman daughter is in a suite that 8 other students who share a good-sized kitchen. She was a member of a culinary club in high-school (just for fun), but although she did a lot of cooking at the start of the year, she told me was was "buying frozen dinners at Trader Joe's" near the end, as finals week approached. She likes the kitchen arrangement though.</p>