We have this neat new invention called a door. When you enter the bathroom, you can close it and do your thing in privacy. And we do respect our privacy. There is no multitasking. 
Well to start, men and women are different. And guys are gross. And, “presumably” one would wear a robe. I know guys that would presumably take the opportunity to “flaunt it.” I guess I just don’t see the point in mixing the sexes in basically a public bathroom.
That wouldn’t have stopped some of my friends back in the day.
@carbmom I think it should be up to your daughter about whether the bathroom situation at MIT is a big enough deal to be an issue for her. If needed, she should be the one to contact MIT housing and/or talk on whatever accepted student’s group there is on Facebook or whatever.
At home, both my sons always lock the bathroom door and change in there before and after showers. No walking around the house in a robe for them. (It’s a tiny bathroom; no room for 2 people.) But, my son at college hasn’t said anything about the co-ed, multi-user restrooms in his house at Caltech being an issue for him.
I initially thought the co-ed restroom thing was kinda suspect, mainly because in my experience males don’t keep restrooms as neat as I’d like, and my college dorm has a restroom in each 2-person room. But, it seems to work, and I wasn’t going to voice issues like that over his choice of college. They have staff who clean the restrooms, which helps.
He does say he showers either late at night or early in the morning to avoid the before-class traffic jam. Not many early birds in his house, at least.
MIT has a wider variety of dorm setups than Caltech, so she may be able to get into housing that better meets her wants if she is as resistant to co-ed restrooms as you. But, her thoughts are the important ones.
Other than brushing your teeth or putting on makeup side by side everything else will be behind a door as well. No one’s changing in front of each other.
I don’t mean to suggest that there’s anything wrong with a kid being uncomfortable with coed bathrooms. I had a college roommate who never changed in from of me. Two years rooming together and I never saw her naked, although she seemed fine with the coed bathrooms. Different strokes for different folks. My posts are only meant to reassure nervous parents that if their kids choose to attend schools where some or all of the bathrooms are coed they will be just fine.
I think the male bashing by some on this thread is sad and unfortunate. My male family and friends aren’t gross and unclean. Perhaps the parents here should work on raising better sons if they think all males are gross and piggish. I just don’t think you can generalize that all males are one way and all females are another, or even the majority of each gender. Life doesn’t work that way.
@doschicos Of our three kids, my eldest son is by far the most clean, neat, orderly. My daughter by far the most messy. His bathroom is always spotless. Her’s is a mess.
@doschicos I’m sorry if I came across as bashing. My experience is not with my sons, who are mostly tidy. It’s 30-years-old experience visiting male-only dorms at Texas A&M. In retrospect, there’s a number of angles from which to bash that experience, many of which are not because the students in that dorm were male.
I don’t really think a parent should get involved in this decision. If the kid has a preference for one or the other that’s one thing, but I don’t think a parent should weigh in. Let the kid figure it out.
My post wasn’t directed at your comment, @ynotgo. 
Other comments were more blunt and there seems to be a theme on this thread that guys are dirty and females aren’t which doesn’t correspond with my own experience nor that of my kids who have lived in group settings for many years.
My husband grew up in a home where “daily” cleaning of the bathroom involved gloves, bleach, scrubbing brushes, ammonia (for the mirror) and emptying the trash. I grew up in a home where that constituted deep, once a week cleaning and if you just wiped a paper towel across the sink one week you just chalked it up to being busy, not being a slob. And you emptied the trash can when it was overflowing. No mystery as to who keeps a neater bathroom.
My sons learned from their father.
They can do that walking down the coed hall from their men-only bathroom too.
Unless it is in a private suite, any shared bathroom is going to be cleaned by professional staff.
Whether a co-ed bathroom works for a child or not is really kid specific. That said, it should be up to the child to call the university to inquire. If they care enough, they will make the call. My son goes to a school with co-ed bathrooms…given how the dorm is architected from the 1960s (when it was single sex) no other set up makes any sense. Kids that want single sex bathrooms choose other dorms that offer those.
When I went off to college a few decades ago I was shocked to find only a coed bathroom on my floor. I was very modest and not pleased. After a week it was no big deal and actually it was more modest than single sex floors.
“I know guys that would presumably take the opportunity to “flaunt it.””
So here’s the funny thing: you have guesses about what a coed bathroom would be like, and other posters and their children have 40+ years of real-life observation. Based on the evidence, young men “flaunting it” in coed bathrooms seems to be virtually unheard of, and is only speculated about by people who haven’t been there.
If you prefer a single-gender dorm environment, great. But if I’ve never been to Japan, and dozens of people who lived in Japan for years are telling me what Japan is like, I would believe them.
@carbmom “She doesn’t allow her little brother or even her parents into the bathroom when she’s showering behind the curtain now.”
If she won’t allow you in the bathroom while she’s in the shower, does that mean that single sex communal bathrooms are also a problem? IME, most kids grow up with a one person at a time bathroom and expect that level of privacy. Then they need to use a locker room or they go off to overnight camp or college or somewhere else with communal bathrooms and they adjust to the different expectations more or less without a hitch. (Yes, not everyone. But most kids.) So you need to separate out the communal issue from the co-ed issue. And I understand why a parent who never lived with a co-ed communal bathroom would find it a very uncomfortable idea. But I’m going to urge you to listen to the experience of many of us here who did live with that and who are telling you it’s no big deal. As I said earlier, weird for the first week, then just life.
If you really think it through, once you’ve gotten past the communal bathroom hurdle (there’s someone in the next shower while you’re showering or someone brushing their teeth while you’re peeing) and assuming the bathrooms are set up so that you don’t have to step naked out of the shower for the whole world to see, what does it really matter if the person in the next shower stall or at the sink is of the opposite sex?
Someone was concerned with guys flaunting it. You don’t have to have a co-ed bathroom for that to happen. Sophomore year, I lived in a co-ed house with 7 people. At the beginning of the year, one of the guys would walk around the house in his briefs. In fact, don’t think it was about flaunting it. I think he was comfortable like that and figured the rest of us would be, too. In any case, the women in the house didn’t like it, so we told him to cover up more. And he did. End of problem.
I’m entirely sure that if there was a problem with men (or women) walking around overexposed, it’s a problem the residence life staff would deal with quickly.
Ok so here are 5 moments of awkwardness I have researched from people who experienced it:
- Guys having a conversation while sitting on the john doing no. 2.
- Stubble in the sink.
- Realizing there is more than one person in the shower.
- Girl doing no 1 with a guy in the bathroom.
- Guys doing no 1 with the door open.
IDK. I went to school with guys who would do that kind of stuff just to mess with people. If you gave them the opportunity, all heck would break loose.
- Guys having a conversation while sitting on the john doing no. 2. - women do this as well.
- Stubble in the sink. - women do this as well
- Realizing there is more than one person in the shower. - could happen (and does) in single sex bathrooms as well.
- Girl doing no 1 with a guy in the bathroom. - this is a problem how?
- Guys doing no 1 with the door open. - ask them to shut the door and be more courteous.
“3) Realizing there is more than one person in the shower.”
Chuckling a little because I spent two years not just in a women’s dorm, but at a women’s college. This happened a lot.