<p>I was wondering what kind of stuff dorm rooms already come with, like obviously a bed and desk and such. Specifically if dorm rooms come with dressers and if so, is it one per room or (in a double) does each person get his or her own? Also with closets, is there one or two in each room (again for a double). I visited a few colleges in my state and one of them gave each student a closet but 1 dresser per room etc. so I was just wondering. Also, if anyone has any other comments on dorm life in general that would be much appreciated. I am getting so pumped for MIT 2016!</p>
<p>It varies between rooms, but you can usually get whatever furniture you want or trade furniture or get extra furniture if there is extra furniture. I have:
1 bed
1 desk
1 dresser
1 armadillo (basically a closet, because I don’t have a closet)
1 large shelving unit</p>
<p>I also have a small table I bought at Walmart, a rug I bought at the grocery store a block away, and a small shelving unit a friend of mine bought and didn’t want anymore. Other Institute furniture that exists includes trash cans and small shelving units. Lots of people build lofts and some people buy larger beds rather than sleep in the Institute beds, which are great unless you like to spread out or are actually two people.</p>
<p>good to know, thank you! When we fill out housing preferences later, do we indicate what kind of room we want, double,single, triple quad?</p>
<p>What room you get will be determined using whatever system your dorm uses once you choose a dorm.</p>
<p>Oh ok, also good to know 
thanks!</p>
<p>When do you choose dorms?</p>
<p>^ I’m going to refer you to an old blog post by Jessie '07:
[“Why</a> does my kid have to move again?” | MIT Admissions](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/why_does_my_kid_have_to_move_a]“Why”>“Why does my kid have to move again?” | MIT Admissions)</p>
<p>You can go down to the paragraph that starts with “The first step in the process of choice”.</p>
<p>In short, you’ll have the chance to explore each dorm in person during CPW, and via websites/videos/printed material over the summer. You’ll rank all the dorms over the summer, and a lottery will be run to place you into a temporary room for orientation.</p>
<p>During orientation, you’ll get to explore dorms in person further, and you’ll enter a second lottery either to change dorms or to stay in the one you were assigned over the summer. After that lottery is run, your dorm will assign rooms – there are a few different ways to do it, and each dorm has its own system, but often you’ll go around and visit all the halls/floors/entries and be assigned to a final room/area of the dorm based on your preferences.</p>
<p>MIT’s dorms are all different, and being able to choose your dorm (and, potentially, sub-area within the dorm) is a really valued part of the MIT experience.</p>
<p>Are you allowed to choose a roommate? I couldn’t find anything on that.</p>
<p>In my dorm (Random Hall), if you are for whatever reason alone in a double you can “pull in” another person if they agree that they want to live with you. If during orientation an upperclassman is alone in a double, they can pull in a freshman of their choosing. Usually if you ask nicely they will pull you in. If you are a freshman and have high priority (in Random Hall, residents are randomly assigned priorities that determine who gets to pick rooms first; they invert themselves every year and are lowered after you use them) and pick a double, you can then immediately pull in a friend of your choosing, assuming that friend likes you as much as you like them and actually wants to live with you, regardless of their priority.</p>
<p>So during all of the moving around to different dorm buildings or dorm rooms in the same building, forgive me for asking this perhaps dumb question, but are you just supposed to carry all of your dorm stuff down the street to your final dorm?</p>
<p>^ Not a dumb question at all!</p>
<p>You’ll only move out once. After you move into your temporary room (don’t unpack fully - I brought a suitcase and left everything else to be shipped once I had my final room), and then you go about doing rush stuff - looking at dorms, picking a dorm, looking at places within the dorm, getting a final assignment. Once you get a final assignment, you move your stuff into your new room.</p>
<p>But yeah, you do just carry stuff to and from your old room - with the help of friendly upperclassmen :)</p>
<p>They did run a shuttle this year after REX, I know because it saved my life trying to move from Simmons to East Campus. Moving within a dorm - get friends and upperclassmen to help/offer food as payment (oreos work well).</p>
<p>Are all of the rooms doubles or are there singles as well?</p>
<p>There are a variety of rooms, depending on your dorm. Random Hall has singles, doubles, and 5-rooms–a double divided by a wall with a door in it into what is essentially two singles, one large, one small. Freshmen here usually wind up in doubles or in the small halves of 5-rooms, but are usually able to get into singles or large halves by the start of sophomore year.</p>
<p>Some of the dorms are mostly singles. If you stay in one of these, you’re likely to get a single freshman year, especially if you want one (and perhaps even if you don’t). MacGregor is practically all singles and McCormick is largely singles as well. And, it’s possible to get singles as a freshman in some of the other dorms.</p>
<p>My son is in Simmons and they still have vacant single rooms. My son almost switched to one but said his double is way bigger than two singles and he’s fine with his roommate and likes the lower floor. If you really want a single, it seems like in a lot of dorms you can get one by second semester at least of freshman year - although they are more money.</p>
<p>My dorm has singles, doubles and triples, but only juniors and seniors get the singles and freshmen get doubles or triples. I was also allowed to request a roommate.</p>
<p>do you have any control over if you get a double or triple? Like if you wouldn’t mind having one roomate but maybe you think have 2 or 3 roomates would kinda be overwhelming</p>
<p>Well, not all dorms have triples (or quads – does Baker still have quads now that Masseh has opened?), so you can use room capacity as one filter in your dorm search. </p>
<p>In dorms that do have higher-capacity rooms, you can generally request a particular capacity room during the room assignment process, but you can imagine that there are usually more people who prefer doubles than people who prefer triples or quads.</p>