<p>do all the dorms have an areas reserved for studying? Is it possible to be quiet and study in baker/ burton conner?
also would someone rank the dorms in terms of closeness to classes and convenience?</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>would someone please rank the dorms according closeness to classes and convenience?
thank you!</p>
<p>It’s certainly possible to have peace and quiet to study in any dorm – this is MIT, after all. Most or all of the dorms have a library or lounge where students can study, but many people also study in their rooms or somewhere like the Student Center reading room. I don’t think there’s a huge difference between any of the dorms in terms of available study space. It’s important to everyone.</p>
<p>It’s somewhat easy to rank the dorms in terms of closeness to class (EC closest, SH/Bexley close, McCormick/Baker pretty close, Random/BC/MacGregor/New/Simmons not very close, New/Next far), but “convenience” is a really, really broad word. Convenient to what? And how do you rank different kinds of convenience?</p>
<p>Dorm choice is not an easy problem, and no dorm is far-and-away “better” than any other. You guys have to narrow down your questions for us to give you useful answers.</p>
<p>Closeness to classes really depends on what classes you are taking. For instance, most people would not consider Simmons to be close to classes, but the course 22 (nukeE) people sure do! A course 10 (chemE) student is going to consider EC or Senior Haus more convenient to their classes than a course 16 (aero/astro) student.</p>
<p>I know EC for one does not have a study room of any sort. We are, however, right next to Hayden Library, where you can go to study if you so desire. Or you can study in your room. That’s cool too.</p>
<p>I agree with Mollie both about her closeness rankings (though I think I’d call Random and Simmons far. And NW35, too. =P Maybe I’m just spoiled from living in EC.) and about the ambiguity of the word ‘convenience.’ I mean, Random is very convenient in that it’s close to Shaw’s and all of the stores in Central Square. The West Campus dorms are convenient in that they’re all pretty close to each other, so if you have friends who live there, they’re easy to visit. EC and SH are close to classes, and also very near the T stop and Kendall Square. Bexley is close to classes and the Student Center.</p>
<p>Simmons can be terrific in some situations. I literally just walk in a straight line down Vassar to get to work in the mornings.</p>
<p>I would just like to jump in and comment to the person who was considering Baker and BC as their top two choices and clear up a common misconception:</p>
<p>Baker and BC are NOTHING ALIKE.</p>
<p>I say this especially because I made the same mistake- I tied them for my first choice dorm because I thought they were basically them same thing, and holy cow would I have been really unhappy at Baker.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with Baker, or that there couldn’t exist a person who would be equally happy in both places. But seriously, the dorms are very, very different.</p>
<p>Baker, as you’ve probably heard, is the “party” dorm, the stereotypical/traditional type of social place, lots of Greek life stuff, etc. Burton Conner is much more diverse (the cultures on the different floors vary quite a bit.) If you’re familiar with the East Campus vs West Campus thing, I like to say that BC is the bridge between them. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that it’s an island between the two sides. While we are nowhere near the level of EC or Random in terms of their culture of building things and such, we are still <em>very</em> different from a lot of west campus dorms.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t <em>quite</em> classify it as a party dorm either, although that does depend on the floor.</p>
<p>Heh, you all should stop letting Burton Third make your entire i3 video - maybe then people won’t think BC and Baker are the same.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, BC does seem to have some of the same things that I like about Random and EC. I think I’ll rank it third.</p>
<p>A question: Bexley is often described as a mixture of west and east campus traits. Other than location, what west campus traits does it have? It seems thoroughly east campus to me, but I may not fully understand it. </p>
<p>Also, what kinds of people enjoy Bexley (beyond “friendly” - what type of lifestyle/work habits/personalities flourish there?)</p>
<p>I’m asking this mostly hypothetically, since I’m not sure how well I would fit into Bexley’s culture, but it intrigues me. And my dad keeps telling me I should live there :-).</p>
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<p>I would, um, not call B3 and Baker the same, and neither would any Bomber I know. They both like to party, that’s about it.</p>
<p>just wanted to say thank you all for the insights :)<br>
do you get to choose which BC floor to live on? how are B3 and Baker different?</p>
<p>Hmm, while I agree with Jessie, I could see how you could get that impression from the i3 video. Come to think of it, that’s really the only info I had to go on, so I assume it’s why I used to think the two dorms were similar…</p>
<p>BC has floor rush, which means that right after you are assigned to your final dorm, you show up at BC and get to do a condensed version of REX within the dorm where you visit all the floors and rank your preferences. The floors get to rank some preferences as well, and then a rooming committee stays up all night trying to make everyone as happy as possible. They achieve wildly varying amounts of success, depending on the preferences that are submitted. Some years people have similar choices and it’s really tough (my freshman year was one of them), other years things tend to work out better. So saying you get to “choose” where you live is not quite true, but you certainly get some say in the matter.</p>
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<p>Note that this is true for many dorms (most or all of the hall/floor-culture-based dorms), not just BC.</p>
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<p>B3 is like someone threw a fairly stereotypical fraternity and East Campus in a blender. It does get some Greeks, but not that many, because it promotes a strong sense of living group loyalty and hall pride. People tend to live there all four years. Baker is more just an extroverted dorm that likes parties and has a lot of Greeks from fraternities and sororities all along the “stereotypical or not” spectrum. At least as of a couple of years ago, it didn’t have much living group loyalty, with a very high percentage of the residents being freshmen, as a lot of the upperclassmen move out, frequently to Greek houses.</p>
<p>just a quick question about the actual lottery form itself:
I filled out my preferences and questionaire about a week ago and saved everything. Today I was going over it one last time and I just wanted to make sure that there is no “submit” button that you need to press to send in the form. Do you only have to save your preferences and at midnight tonight they will automatically be submitted?</p>
<p>Thanks for this thread everyone! Too bad I didn’t participate, but it was very useful nonetheless (people asked all of my questions for me!). Hope to see some of you in Baker, as I chose that 1st. BC was my second, despite their differences (thanks for that tip, and I can definitely confirm just from seeing them during CPW). Bexley, NW35, and Simmons followed in that order, and the rest were not my style. See you all soon! FPOPs anyone (FLP)?</p>
<p>By the way, I was wondering if anyone else couldn’t access the main MIT website, because I couldn’t. In fact, I couldn’t access any web.mit.edu address from any browser or computer. I’m just glad I had already gotten my certificate and researched!</p>
<p>I’m thinking that Baker #1, BC #2, and Bexley #3 means you’ll end up in Bexley, but I could be wrong.</p>
<p>Hopefully Random won’t be too popular this year . . . agh, why is it so small?</p>
<p>some questions:</p>
<p>is it difficult to switch into baker through the housing adjustment lottery?</p>
<p>Also, if someone put down that they preferred a quad, for example, are they more likely to get a dorm which has quads in it? or if they requested a single, are they more likely to get a dorm that has singles for freshman? </p>
<p>just trying to predict which dorm i will get out of my top 3 or 4…</p>
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Yes. Like, 3 people manage to do that each year.</p>
<p>I think the room sizes are used to assign a temp room once you’ve already been assigned a temp dorm – the housing lottery is, to my knowledge, a lottery only based on the dorm rankings.</p>
<p>It’s true that Baker has historically been a popular dorm both in the initial lottery and the adjustment lottery, but remember that past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Whether a particular dorm is easy or difficult to get into depends on the preferences of this year’s class, and the popularity of individual dorms is not static.</p>