<p>I know it's early, I know there're i3 videos, and blogs, and I know that there're individual websites.</p>
<p>I'm still wondering, though, if anyone has anything to say about where they lived or other dorms on campus. Plug your hall, complain about another, make terribly vague generalizations about certain living areas, whatever.</p>
<p>I lived in McCormick for a month through WTP. I haven't had the <em>real</em> college experience, but my floor (in the West tower) was full of other girls and staff from the program.</p>
<p>It's nice, the lobby is lovely, and McCormick's extremely close to Lobby 7 and the Student Center, as well as the Harvard Bridge to get across to Boston.</p>
<p>No air conditioning, though, which was a HUGE pain since I was there in July, but I assume it shouldn't be a problem except for maybe a week or so in the school year.</p>
<p>The floor layout is nice, the kitchens are spacious, but there is a high occupant-to-bathroom ratio, which was okay as long as you took showers early.</p>
<p>BEAUTIFUL views of campus and especially the Boston skyline/Charles river. Also, the triples are HUGE.</p>
<p>So I did a really brief rundown of all the dorms in these posts:
Dorms</a> A-M
Dorms</a> N-S</p>
<p>Actually, that entire thread is worth reading. It's almost three years old, so some of it is out of date -- e.g., Next House now allows students who lottery in to switch dorms in the readjustment lottery, and there's nothing on the new dorm which will be in old Ashdown.</p>
<p>Does everybody understand the housing timeline?</p>
<p>New Ashdown was actually postponed due to a lack of funding, so you don't really have any holes there, Mollie.</p>
<p>Also, I'm just putting this out there for the benefit of the many of you who will subconsciously make this false assumptions:</p>
<p>Burton Conner and Baker are NOT alike.</p>
<p>They can seem very similar based on the i3 materials but I promise you they are not. I know this because I tied them as my first choice dorm, ended up in BC, and served as the BC Rush chair for an unprecedented 2 years. Trust me. </p>
<p>(P.S. This does not mean that either is better or worse, just that they are not very similar.)</p>
<p>"McCormick. The only single-sex dorm on campus, only for female students. Has a reputation of being for the somewhat girlier/fragile girls on campus whose parents won't let them live with boys. A dining hall, although I think it's open only on certain days of the week? About 75 yards from the Student Center. Rooms are singles or doubles; freshmen get doubles."</p>
<p>Is it really true that only girly girls stay there? Is it a bad thing if students stay there or want to?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Is it really true that only girly girls stay there? Is it a bad thing if students stay there or want to?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No (IME the McCormick population is disproportionately femme, but far from exclusively), and no. Choose the dorm you want. It's not a bad thing to want McCormick (certainly not something that I wanted, but if everyone wanted the same things that I did, I would probably have not been able to get what I wanted :)). However, <em>now</em> is not really the time to be making your dorm choice. McCormick unfortunately still has binding RBA, but at least wait until CPW.</p>
<p>There <em>are</em> a number of McCormick residents who are there because their parents won't let them live anywhere else, but it's certainly not the whole dorm, some people actually want that environment.</p>
<p>what is binding RBA?</p>
<p>It's not bad to want to live in any dorm on campus. There's no value judgment implied by the choice of any particular dorm -- each dorm is there because people want to live there and perpetuate that culture.</p>
<p>Please keep in mind that the descriptions I wrote in the previous thread are intentionally short and stereotype-heavy. That's what you get in a few lines. No dorm (or person) fits neatly into a box, and each dorm is a population of people who choose to be there for different reasons.</p>
<p>Something else I said in that thread was
</p>
<p>
RBA is residence-based advising -- McCormick residents are assigned freshman advising groups based on their dorm. Therefore, since advising groups are assigned prior to Orientation, anyone who's assigned to McCormick in the summer housing lottery must stay there for freshman year; McCormick residents can't participate in the housing readjustment lottery held during Orientation. Therefore, you have to be pretty sure you want to live in McCormick if you rank it high on your preference list for the initial lottery, because there's no way to move out of the dorm freshman year if you're assigned there.</p>
<p>i think this whole finding the "right" dorm thing is blown out of proportion. it promotes self segregation. also, i would recommend not really listening to other people talk about dorms. many people overgeneralize, and you don't get a true idea of the dorm. it doesn't matter what other people think of a dorm, it matters what you think of a dorm. so make your decision after visiting the dorms.</p>
<p>Um, as someone who has spent 3 years wondering if she picked the right dorm, I am absolutely guarantee you that it does matter. I am super unhappy with my living group right now....they are nice people, just not right for me, and it MATTERS. Promise.</p>
<p>And obviously you should come see what the dorms are like for yourself, but if people are curious and going to ask us for our opinions, of course we're going to give them, and I don't see anything wrong with that.</p>
<p>LauraN, which dorm did you choose?</p>
<p>out of curiosity, is there anyone around over winter break?
my parents just decided on a sudden MIT visit next week, so will there be a few people on campus?</p>
<p>I live in Burton Conner. (It is a great dorm, and probably the right place for me, but in BC the floors all have different personalities as well, and I ended up on the wrong one of those.)</p>
<p>a fair number of people come back after the break, when iap starts, but before new year's things are fairly empty as far as i know</p>
<p>eternallysleepy, I am also visiting MIT next week sometime! (main purpose of the visit= buy stuff at the coop!!)</p>
<p>I don't know if this is atypical, but I have a bunch of friends that are coming back for New Year's...they're all probably going to be holed up in their dorms, though.</p>
<p>The name of one of the funky buildings is called Stata right? why do many people call it Strata?</p>
<p>umm... they're wrong, i guess. i've never heard anyone say strata.
some people pronounce it stay-ta, others staa-ta</p>
<p>if you search mit strata building, you get quite a lot of hits.</p>