Dorm Personality Quiz

Colleges & Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>If a student had the following personality/interests, where do you think he would best fit?</p>

<p>Fun loving and friendly
Collaborative rather than competitive
High integrity; little tolerance for cheaters, liars
His idea of a party is hanging around with a bunch of friends
Doesn't drink or do drugs
Video gamer
Straight but comfortable with those who have other sexual preferences
Concern for the environment & social justice
Wants to be as far from cigarette smoke as possible</p>

<p>Thank you!</p>

2

<p>I think all the dorms at MIT have those personality traits. The only thing I see that wouldn’t work is Senior House since it allows smoking. </p>

<p>What I suggest is that the student explore all the dorms during REX and talk to a lot of upperclassmen, see if he can imagine himself living with these people. It’s really hard to pinpoint a dorm without actually visiting it and talking to the people there.</p>

3

<p>I would suggest that your son makes his own decision once he gets here, taking full advantage of Rush. That’s what it’s here for. He may find that his tastes change - I thought that I wanted to live in a quiet place and ended up living on a rather loud floor. I found that living with people who I really connected with was more important than there being absolute quiet at night, because I could close my door. Same with smoking - I don’t personally smoke, and I thought I would hate people smoking around me, but it turns out to be essentially a non-issue unless you have really severe allergies. The best thing you can do is to permit your son to make his own housing decision, using all of the resources that the Institute will offer him during Rush.</p>

4

<p>I absolutely agree with Karen.</p>

<p>Those traits may cut out a dorm or two, but definitely don’t narrow down to one.</p>

5

<p>I believe you may have come to the wrong conclusion about why I asked.</p>

<p>I am not trying to limit his options – he has limited his own options. He got his first temp choice – Simmons – and he intends to stick with it. He is unlikely to take advantage of REX. If there were other dorms that would be particularly well suited for him, I would try to encourage him to at least check out one or two before making his commitment. Whether or not he takes the advice and whatever he decides is up to him, but I will have done my part by opening his horizons.</p>

6

<p>Nice, a parent who is going to encourage their child to participate in REX. I love it! =)</p>

<p>I think, however, that everyone else is right, and the traits you’ve listed don’t really narrow it down much. I think we’d need more information to give good advice, like some more specific hobbies or interests. Does he like building things? Would he be interesting in customizing his living space? More likely to develop a close group of friends to stay with for a longer time or more interested in exploring around? It’s just that based on the things you’ve said, I could easily suggest 6 dorms, which doesn’t sound like it would help.</p>

<p>Also, not that you shouldn’t encourage him to explore yourself, but upperclassmen are likely to do the same and give you a helping hand. Numerous times I have sat down with a freshman for a long conversation, picked another dorm I think they’d like, and physically followed them out the front door to make sure they actually left to go explore said dorm. (Just ask Snively.)</p>

7

<p>Thanks for the response, LauraN. </p>

<p>Here’s more to go on: he’s shy and tends to hold back from the crowd till he gets comfortable (and then he’s super gregarious). He’s not much of a joiner. I’ve always tried to expose him to a wide variety of activities/experiences/people and expand his horizons, but ultimately he is who he is and does what he does. </p>

<p>He is a serious gamer with plans to develop a game of his own, after interning at a well-known game development co. Also interested in filmmaking. Will major in Comparative Media Studies. </p>

<p>He’s an early riser although his idea of fun is to stay up all night with friends, talking, playing computer games and watching Scrubs. When he needs to sleep, no amount of noise will keep him awake – but it will distract him from his work. His pattern in HS was to do all his work at school, then come home and veg out. He thinks that will work for him @ MIT, too – he’ll find a study spot outside his room, maybe outside the dorm, to work.</p>

<p>He plays chess and scrabble. Not into team sports but loves dodge ball. Not particularly interested in decorating his room. He gets a kick out of the hacks but is not necessarily interested in doing them himself. He’s interested in cooking and baking and may want to do his own at some point, but he knows he shouldn’t take that on during his first semester. </p>

<p>One reason he chose Simmons is because it’s large enough to have lots of opportunities to meet people and make friends. Living in a co-ed situation is important to him. He is more likely to develop a small group of close friends rather than exploring. He likes the on-site dining, so he doesn’t have to brave the Boston winters just to get something to eat. </p>

<p>He only considered dorms that were nonsmoking – if a dorm had a single floor or lounge area that allowed smoking, he ruled it out. Otherwise, he might have gone for a dorm with cats. He loves animals.</p>

<p>Don’t know if I’ve given you enough to go on. At his HS he was a one-of-a-kind but at MIT this may all fit a stereotypical profile. If you’ve got a suggestion, I’ll float it to him. If not, I’ll butt out and trust the REX process.</p>

8

<p>I get where you’re coming from, but I really do think that you should let it be your son’s decision. Obviously you know him better than we do, but I personally know that it would never work for me if my parents handed me a list of dorms and said ‘you should also check these out!’. If he’s curious, at least the way that East Campus is set up, the smoking halls are separated from the nonsmoking halls by at least a story and two doors, and legitimately, unless someone’s blowing smoke directly into the trash chute that is simultaneously open on a nonsmoking hall, there won’t be smoke there.</p>

<p>I find it kind of hard to believe that someone could go through Rush in all of its glory and not explore other dorms at all. It’s kind of just too awesome.</p>

<p>Anyway, if he’s doing a preorientation program, he’ll probably meet a lot of other like-minded students who will be interested in dorm rush, or at the very least, will probably not live in Simmons, so he’ll most likely end up going to visit other dorms. And it could be possible that Simmons is the perfect fit for him. I agonized over other dorm choices after I had visited them all, only to confirm my housing lottery assignment, despite fearing that the only reason that I wanted to live here was because I didn’t go to enough Rush activities. It turns out that EC is pretty much the perfect dorm for me.</p>

<p>But yeah. East Campus builds a roller coaster and a bunch of other cool stuff for Rush, so he will probably want to check that out even if he’s not even remotely thinking of living here, just because it’s cool. And he can pass by a bunch of other dorms on the way to EC if he walks the correct way. But, at the end of the day, this is probably one of the first major decisions he’s going to make on his own, and I know it’s really hard, but when you’re miles and miles away, you kind of need to respect that. My parents did, and it made the whole process a LOT easier when I didn’t feel uncomfortable telling them ‘oh no, I didn’t end up going to Burton-Conner, I just went back to Senior Haus instead’.</p>

9

<p>The funny thing is that I still don’t really think that narrows it down much :smiley: I’d urge him to not just rule out smoking dorms - we have two halls out of ten in EC that allow smoking, but they’re cut off from each other enough such that you can’t smell it on other halls. It was a major concern for me, and I live on 3W (below one of the two smoking halls) and can’t tell at all. (3W is also something of a gamer hall, but I wouldn’t try to convince him to come to EC solely for that.)</p>

<p>I don’t know what you could do, but hopefully he’s tempted near decent upperclassmen who will throw him out if they see him around too much. Really, exploring the dorms yourself is the best way to figure out where you want to live.</p>

10

<p>Thanks for your thoughts, everyone.</p>

<p>k4r3n2 and PiperXP, if it were me, I’d be in EC, but then, I’m more open to new experiences than my kid.</p>

<p>All the dorms sound awesome. The whole REX process is totally awesome! Unfortunately, there’s no parent hall and I have to stay home and work to pay tuition. Being an adult is not what it’s cracked up to be ;-)</p>

11

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</p>

<p>If he sticks with Simmons, that’s fine, but if he doesn’t at least explore during REX, he’s likely to start off at a disadvantage, reputation-wise. Upperclassmen notice the people who stick to their temp living groups like glue, and not in a good way. At the very least, even if he thinks he has no interest in various dorms, he should go to their events and get free food. :smiley: And if in the process he discovers another place he likes, so much the better.</p>

<p>Actually, based on what you’ve said, there is an Independent Living Group (ILG) that I feel I should point him at - pika. He wouldn’t be allowed to live there until sophomore year, even if he got a bid, but he should check it out. It is small, like all the ILGs, but based on the little info we have to go on here it sounds dead on. Especially the environmentalism and social justice bit.</p>

<p>A lot of what he wants could be found in any living group. From what I remember, Simmons had a high proportion of Republicans, which might not be his thing based on what you said (about environmentalism and social justice), but like you said, it’s a big dorm.</p>

<p>From what I have seen, most CMS kids live on the east side (in EC/Senior Haus/Random). Which is not to say that he can’t go against the grain. :slight_smile: But at the very least he will probably end up visiting classmates in those places a lot.</p>

12

<p>

This is news to me.</p>

<p>WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.</p>

13

<p>

</p>

<p>I’m going by a combination of anecdata and Chris’ Facebook data scraper results (which are admittedly a few years old):</p>

<p>[Facebook</a> Social Analysis: Fun with Facebook](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/varenc/www/facebook.html]Facebook”>http://web.mit.edu/varenc/www/facebook.html)</p>