<p>how much do most student spend in their dorm a day? do most peeps study in their rooms or at the libraries?</p>
<p>Depends on your own preference – I always did homework and studied in my dorm, but other people preferred libraries or reading rooms or empty classrooms.</p>
<p>I think some people find it too distracting to study / do homework in their dorms, but yes, different people prefer different things.</p>
<p>I personally prefer to study in my dorm, although I do end up using the libraries as a study space if I want to study in the hour or two I have between classes on some days (since it wouldn’t be a good use of time to go back to my room - I live in MacGregor). I find that the reading room in the student center and some of the libraries can get rather crowded at times.</p>
<p>Does anyone know where I can find the policies on painting for each dorm?</p>
<p>^^^ You can paint in Bexley, Senior Haus, EC, Random, and Burton-Conner. I might be missing one.</p>
<p>^ I was wondering because I did see painting in Simmons when I was at CPW.</p>
<p>Is it first-come, first-served to sign up for dorms? As a new freshman, will I receive a housing form to fill out? Should I try to return it asap?</p>
<p>(Re: above, you can paint in MacGregor, too, although you’ll have to paint it back at the end of the year.)</p>
<p>
Nope.</p>
<p>There will be a housing lottery held over the summer, where you will rank all of the dorms in order of your preference for them. The lottery will close on a certain date (usually late June?), but there’s no advantage to entering early – the lottery is run only after everyone’s responses are in. </p>
<p>After the lottery is run, you’ll be assigned a temporary room in one of the dorms, almost always one of your top three choices. When you get to MIT, you will live there during Orientation, during which time you will explore that dorm and the others and decide where you want to make your permanent home. Toward the end of Orientation, you can choose to stay in the dorm you were assigned in the summer lottery, or to enter a second lottery (the housing readjustment lottery). </p>
<p>After the readjustment lottery is run, you will know which dorm you’ll be in. At that point, each dorm will assign housing on its own – in many places, there’s a night where all the freshmen visit all of the halls/floors/entries, rank them in order of preference, and are assigned to a final room within the dorm. The final room assignments come out the next morning, and the upperclassmen will help you move to your new room.</p>
<p>ok, great! Thank you! So do you just rank the dorms, or the entries too? Like can I only list MacGregor once? And are there any other dorms with singles (other than MacG and EC)?</p>
<p>You only rank each dorm once. Once you’re assigned to a dorm permanently, THEN there’s a process to rank your favorite entries/floors/halls. The lottery you fill out over the summer and the readjustment lottery during Orientation are both run by the Residential Life Office. They assign you to a dorm. Housing WITHIN the dorm is run by students, and each dorm has its own procedure as to how to determine which sub-unit you’ll be assigned to.</p>
<p>Re: painting in BC, technically the rule there is also that you need to paint it back at the end of the year. In practice, this really isn’t an issue. (Usually you will know the person moving into your room next year, and you can ask them if they mind the paint. 9 times out of 10 they’ll either say they’re going to keep it the way it is, or that they’re planning on painting it a different color anyway, so there’s no point in you painting it back to white in May only for them to paint it green in August.)</p>
<p>I think the policy in all dorms is that you need to paint your room back at the end of the year, but at least in EC, no one cares unless it’s a freshman room.</p>
<p>can someone talk a little bit about ashdown/phoenix group? all i know is that the rooms are really nice…</p>
<p>^ </p>
<p>-they have a dining hall, which I hear is the best one on campus
-you’re extremely close to the closet supermarket, and central square, where there are restaurants and easy access to the T
-you share the dorm with grad students
-it’s pretty remote from main campus though (that’s what you get from being close to the supermarket), but there’s a shuttle that you can take if you don’t want to walk
-all singles? (someone verify this)
-the newest dorm, so pretty clean and all</p>
<ul>
<li>most expensive dorm</li>
<li>small number of underclassmen</li>
<li>I hear it doesn’t really have a very defined culture, no institutional history</li>
<li>everyone I know has moved, said it was boring (of course, everyone I know moved to EC or Senior Haus :P)</li>
</ul>
<p>despite its disadvantages, ashdown/phoenix group sounds pretty tempting to me… but in your opinion, is it pretty difficult for a freshman to live there socially? like i’ve read someone else’s account of living there and apparently, most people move in already with a close knit group of friends?</p>
<p>Sorry for the interruption in the Ashdown discussion, but does anyone have input on the culture in McCormick? I’ve heard about different events and traditions for some of the other dorms but I haven’t really heard much along those lines about McCormick.</p>
<p>I’d like some input on EC please!</p>
<p>Er, I live there? Do you have a question about it?</p>
<p>Re: NW 35.</p>
<p>-they have a dining hall, which I hear is the best one on campus</p>
<p>The dining hall closed after the first year, and the Phoenix group eat meals in what is essentially a converted storage closet. I don’t know how it rates against other meal plans though.</p>
<p>-all singles? (someone verify this)
Yes/no. There are 2-bedroom apartments and efficiency apartments. Students in the two bedroom units will have their own bedrooms and share a kitchen/living area and bathroom.</p>
<p>I’ve eaten at NW35 twice. Once before the huge dining hall was closed and once afterwards. </p>
<p>Before you essentially ate with grad students, who was also apparently in on the plan. It was all you can eat, though only limited options.</p>
<p>After the dining hall closed, the group ate in this small room (no grad students). However, it still fit everyone. The menu has been exactly the same as Next’s Dining the two times I’ve been there and it’s comparable to Next Dining (Which I find ok, not super good, but better than some other dorms’). The cost is 4 dollars per meal, all you can eat. Keep in mind that you still had to fork over money at the beginning of the semester for the dining plan though.</p>
<p>Also, for incoming freshmen, you’ll really only experience the current dining system for one year before everything changes to an all you can eat option at the dining dorms. (Which I’m not very happy about…Since I’ll basically have to spend 2-4 times more money on food)</p>