<p>Is it possible to get an individual dorm room? My main fear about being really far away from home is that I won't have anywhere to get away, just to be alone.</p>
<p>MacGregor is all singles. Other than that, it’s rare to get a single as a freshman.</p>
<p>But try not to automatically write off living in a double. The idea of not being able to be alone can be scary, but depending on where you live and who your roommate is, it is definitely possible to have enough ‘space’. You’d be surprised how quickly you can adapt.</p>
<p>Come live in MacGregor! It’s awesome! (Sorry, I live there, lol.)</p>
<p>metapod is right - though it’s not unheard of for freshmen to get singles in other dorms, it is a lot harder - does anybody know which dorms have the most singles? I do know that after your freshman year, it’s pretty easy to get a single if you want one - but by then you may have found that you actually like living with a roommate after all.</p>
<p>^ MacGregor does have doubles ^.^</p>
<p>Frosh get singles at EC pretty often. That said, if you pick EC just so you can live in a single, there’s a high change that you’ll be unhappy :)</p>
<p>Ok, we have 3 doubles in the entire building. The odds of you getting stuck in one of those if you don’t want one is pretty low - usually freshmen who want a double but what to live in MacG claim those, I think.</p>
<p>^Agreed with gigog – if you want a single in MacGregor, you will get one, end of story.</p>
<p>^ I have a friend who was quite disappointed freshman year to find herself in one of those doubles. I’d rather note the technicality, even if it’s just 6 beds out of 326 and you have a 98% chance of getting a single ^.^</p>
<p>if you want a single in senior haus, you’ll get one. you just don’t do floor rush with anybody and they’ll put you in a single. you’re not guaranteed to get the floor you want, though. and also, picking senior haus because you want a single is generally a bad idea. the culture here is strong, and if it doesn’t agree with you, you’d be pretty unhappy.</p>
<p>would this plan work?</p>
<p>tour all the dorms during CPW. pick it during the summer and get temped in it. so that you won’t have to worry about it later?</p>
<p>Well, of course, but the summer housing lottery is a lottery, so you don’t just get to pick a dorm.</p>
<p>At any rate, there’s not much worrying involved – just a lot of free food and social events. But if you want to come to orientation already having decided you want to stay in your temp dorm, nobody is going to force you to explore. You will probably have to experience another (short) meet-and-greet and selection process to pick your actual sub-dorm group (entry, floor, etc.), but this depends on which dorm you end up in.</p>
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<p>Um, I did. =)</p>
<p>Nobody can force you to change your mind, of course. But I was Rush Chair for two years in a row, and I have been known to follow frosh out the front door to make sure they really left if I thought they were spending too much time in BC and not exploring their options. Just ask Snively. =)</p>
<p>Most of the kids I did this to ended up staying in BC anyway, which was also fine. The point was not to kick them out or make them change their minds, but to make them be sure about their decision. Upperclassmen in certain dorms tend to do this kind of thing more often than others. If it happens to you, don’t take it personally.</p>
<p>In any case, picking your dorm during CPW is a fine plan, but actually somewhat difficult. As jam-packed as CPW is, and as little sleep as you will get, it can still be a challenge to even visit a majority of the dorms. I thought I knew which dorms I liked after CPW. (I was wrong.)</p>
<p>Thanks guys! What kind of dorm is MacGregor? Like what are the people like?</p>
<p>Is it a bad idea for a freshman who doesn’t know anyone to get a single room? Some people say that it’s a lot easier to meet people if you have a roommate (because you get out more, meet your roommate’s friends, etc), but others say it doesn’t matter because most students study in the library or common areas rather than in their rooms.</p>
<p>^ Check out the i3 videos you get over the summer and see all the dorms in person. Seriously, this’ll give you better information than anything any one of us can say here.</p>
<p>In EC, at least, people tend to hang out in the lounges rather than divide up and hang out into people’s rooms. It’s not intimidating at all to just sit down in a lounge and talk to people, whereas I think I’d be intimidated by trying to invite myself into someone’s room. My guess is that many dorms operate the way EC does, so socializing works out :)</p>
<p>I was apprehensive about staying in a double frosh year, but I ended up living in a TRIPLE (there’s only one of it in the 17 rooms that we have, which we call the frosh ghetto). Surprisingly, it turned out to be a great experience and the only inconvenience was really not being able to play music loud at night. I had a friend feel the same way about the quads in Baker. I don’t know, you may be pleasantly surprised - having roommates is not so bad as what people make it out to be, unless you get one of those “I-bring-my-bf-home-at-night-and-have-sex-on-the-top-bunk-while-you’re-trying-to-sleep-on-the-bottom-bunk” types, which did happen to my high school classmate at Wellesley her frosh year. : P</p>
<p>Chris confirm / deny, in a triple you always end up with 2 roommates ganging up against the third.</p>
<p>Also, for the record, if your roommate sexiles you, you will probably be able to convince a lot of the upperclassmen on your hall to talk to your roommate on your behalf if you’re afraid to. One of our freshmen this year had this problem, and we redid rooming so that he now has a single. If your roommate is truly horrible (and very few are), stuff can be done.</p>
<p>^ Dude, I thought I didn’t have a life, checking CC at 4 AM on a Sunday morning.</p>
<p>As my roommates still say, “What goes on in the triple, stays in the triple.” ; )</p>
<p>I’d, of course, encourage you to check out MacG’s i3 video and visit during CPW, but in general, the culture of MacGregor varies significantly by entry. There are nine entries in MacGregor, and they vary from very social/party to sporty to nerdy to anything else. There’s really less of a whole-dorm culture than there is an entry culture.</p>
<p>
In a dorm like MacGregor, where everybody has a single, the people in your suite become like your roommates. My best friend and I were placed next to each other (intentionally by the rooming chairs) freshman year, and we considered ourselves roommates who had different rooms. We were together much of the time when we were awake, but when we needed private time, we could have our own separate space.</p>
<p>In many places in MacGregor, your door will be open at all times when you’re awake and clothed, so people stop by your room to chat, sit in the hallways together, sit in the big entry lounges and watch TV/eat together. So even though you have your own space, you will only really be alone when you choose to be, and that’s mostly when you’re doing serious work or sleeping.</p>
<p>(Fun fact: Since I lived in MacGregor all four years, I have never had a roommate other than my husband, and he’s never had a roommate other than me. We both turned out very nicely socially adjusted. :))</p>
<p>I also never had a roommate at MIT (lived in MacG all 4 years) and I think I turned out fine. You’ll make friends in your classes, at extracurricular activities, and w/in your living group - while it’s nice to have a roommate as a built-in friend, it isn’t at all necessary.</p>
<p>Besides, if you want to mix things up a bit, you can always find a roommate for the summer. (People who stay at MIT over the summer often end up in completely different housing, since only half of the dorms are open - so this is a great opportunity to try living w/ a roommate for just a short period of time. Also, even if you don’t stay at MIT - you may find yourself interning at a company w/ other MIT students who might make good roommates.)</p>
<p>I think it depends on the person. Some people will enjoy having a roommate for social reasons, whereas for others the pros of having your own space outweigh the potential cons. I am a very social, outgoing person and had no problem meeting people all over campus, but I did enjoy having a roommate just because we got along pretty well and it was sort of fun to have a built-in friend like that. My sister, on the other hand, just started college this fall and I think having a roommate is a much bigger deal for her. She didn’t have a choice in the matter, there are no singles for frosh at her campus, but I do think that being able to hang out with a roommate and meet her friends is making the experience much better for her. (We are very, very different people.)</p>
<p>So it’s really up to you. I would agree with what Piper said- socializing happens all over the place. It’s quite easy to hang out with people in your floor or suite lounges. (In fact, it’s rather common to see people just sitting down in the hallway, hanging out and chatting.) Most of these things are several feet away, if not literally right outside your dorm room door.</p>
<p>I lived in Baker my freshman year in a triple (that actually was temped as a quad) and I must say that the room was HUGE. I definitely had more room in there than I did in rooms that were for fewer people. I agree with people in that you should decide for yourself if you want to live with others (and how many) based on wanting to have roommates, not based on the amount of space you get.</p>
<p>Between the three of us, we tried to fill up the room and could barely do it - 2 bunks, 4 desks, 2 couches, a coffee table, a long folding table, and 4 closets. And we still had space.</p>