<p>I’ve walked (and biked - when I still had a bike frosh year) to the one in Somerville a couple of times. You basically get to Central Square and then follow Prospect all the way down till where it ends. It’s a fair walk, like 30 or 40 minutes, much faster with a bike though. There’s a bus that goes to the Somerville one (if you time it right, you can catch it on the way back when you have stuff), but just like all buses in Boston with the exception of the No. 1 bus, they’re all highly unreliable. It’s still easiest to have someone drive you (hint hint your GRT) when you need to go to Target.</p>
<p>Make sure you know the size of your bed before you buy sheets. Most dorm rooms have what they call extra long twin beds.</p>
<p>does anyone know of places to grocery shop? La Verde’s is too expensive.</p>
<p>[url=<a href="Google 地圖. There’s a weekend shuttle if your dorm is relatively far away.</p>
<p>Grocery stores are marked on my map with a milk-and-apple icon.</p>
<p>Shaw’s/Star Market is the standard supermarket in Boston, but stores like Trader Joe’s can be a great budget choice for students. There are also several different ethnic grocery stores – I find Super 88 to be incredibly cheap.</p>
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<p>NEVER grocery shop there. It breaks my heart already when I buy drinks there.</p>
<p>Pls compare the prices of 1) a banana or 2) Celeste pizza against the prices of any large supermarket in Boston, and you will realize how much prices are jacked up at Verde’s.</p>
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<p>Super 88 is amazing!! : ) I go there almost every week. Aside from the one at Brookline (with an awesome Asian food court attached that has great bibimbap), there’s also another one right by Andrews on the Red Line that’s bigger. There’s a wealth of Asian foodstuffs but you can also get groceries very cheaply if you’re inclined - the downside is that both of them are a long ways off from MIT.</p>
<p>Also, Trader Joe’s has incredible frozen/prepared foods. I don’t know how they do it.</p>
<p>Hi!</p>
<p>I didn’t want to start a new thread for this, I’m just wondering what is the best place to shops where you can get everything in one place. I can only take the essentials on the plane so I will need sheets, cooking utensils, a bike, etc. I’m going with my dad and neither of us have been in the States before so I really have no idea if a place like that exists. We will only have one day for the shopping so it would be best if we didn’t need to go around town all day.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot ^_^</p>
<p>The best place in the Boston area to get everything all in one spot is probably Target ([Target.com</a> – Furniture, Patio Furniture, Baby, Swimwear, Toys and more](<a href=“http://www.target.com%5DTarget.com”>http://www.target.com)). </p>
<p>There are several Boston-area Target stores linked in my map on the previous page. Will you and your dad have a rental car, or will you be dependent on public transportation?</p>
<p>EDIT: There are also services provided by some Boston-area stores like Bed Bath & Beyond where you can order your stuff online and have it held at a store in the area of your college. That sounds like it might work for you, although BB&B is mostly kitchen/bath stuff.</p>
<p>Thank you Mollie, you’re great! </p>
<p>I have no idea about the car, I should probably look into it. Carrying all that stuff with public doesn’t sound fun.</p>
<p>It’s definitely nice to have a car to carry stuff – I’ve been that person, hauling stuff from the Red Line all the way to the westmost end of campus, and it’s not fun or easy. </p>
<p>Driving in Boston is not for the faint of heart, though (the streets are not nicely organized and have poor signage; the native drivers are fairly aggressive and unsympathetic; pedestrians don’t believe in using crosswalks). :)</p>
<p>The thing with the crosswalks is actually the same here. Mostly because drivers don’t usually bother to stop so it doesn’t really make a difference if you use the crosswalk or not, or so some pedestrians think.</p>
<p>Actually something else came to my mind and it might be a strange question but do all Targets on your map sell the same things or are some bigger than others and have a better selection)</p>
<p>There is some variety, but it’s not totally huge.</p>
<p>The bigger Targets are the one near Andrew Station (South Bay Center), the one in Everett (Gateway Center), and, IIRC, the one in Watertown. The others are a bit smaller.</p>
<p>(I feel like I should note that not everybody in the US, or Boston, knows as much about local Target stores as I do. My husband and I are aspiring suburbanites. We go to Target every Saturday afternoon after lunch. :))</p>
<p>Eveyone has their weird areas of expertise =) I could probably spend hours discussing the local public transport system, for one.</p>
<p>Do the desks in our dorm rooms have shelves/other ways to store a lot of books neatly?</p>
<p>Actually, if anyone has a picture of their desk at MIT, that would be super helpful. Or a link to such a picture. I’m trying to figure out how I’ll be able to organize my things and determine how much stuff to bring from there. Namely how many books I should bring. I’m not sure I’ll have that much time for reading, but I’d like to have most of my books there.</p>
<p>Also, for current MIT students - did any of you bring any of your high school schoolwork with you? I’ve saved all of my stuff from my AP Biology class, but I’m not sure that it would benefit me to bring it with me, and if it won’t benefit me, then maybe I’ll just pass it along to a rising HS senior who I trust not to take advantage of it…</p>
<p>In MacGregor, there are shelves that fit into tracks in the wall, which is where I stored all my textbooks and binders (and my TV and various other things). I also bought a small bookshelf sophomore year for all my paperbacks.</p>
<p>Desk in simmons: <a href=“http://i.imgur.com/FwfR0.jpg[/url]”>http://i.imgur.com/FwfR0.jpg</a></p>
![http://i.imgur.com/FwfR0.jpg[/url]](http://i.imgur.com/FwfR0.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>The shelves are separate and can be attached to the bed or stacked.</p>
<p>My desk at NH: <a href=“http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7199/dsc08409.jpg[/url]”>http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7199/dsc08409.jpg</a> (excuse the amount of crap that’s on it, this is the week before finals =p)</p>
![http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7199/dsc08409.jpg[/url]](http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7199/dsc08409.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>I don’t know whether metapod’s desk is custom or just the norm for Simmons, but my desk is the standard desk that comes with practically every west campus dorm that I’ve been in that uses a factory desk (haven’t been enough east campus dorms to see). It’s the really standard desk with a pullout central drawer and three drawers on the right (heck, even my friend at other colleges have that desk).</p>
<p>New House (and Next House and McCormick) I know for certain has these bookshelves that (I think) comes with the Standard Desk, and it’s made out of the same wood with like three shelves with different heights for different sized books. Now, I probably have the most books in the entire floor (I’m known as the textbook library in my hall), and they all still fit comfortably within the shelf. The difficult part is packing them all away at the end of the year, however, since it gets incredibly heavy if you have too many books.</p>
<p>Some dorms have shelves built into the wall, like Baker and MacGregor, as previously mentioned. These tend to have less space than the stand-alone shelves. But you should just come and look at your future dorm room to see how much space you need. It’s an easy trip to target if you need more space.</p>
<p>(aside: Baker is quite different (but cool!) 'cause every room has its own custom furniture since the rooms are all shaped differently because of the weird slant and tilt of the building, so your desks and your shelves are custom designed by the architect in most instances in the rooms =p, hence, some of my friends have humongous desks in Baker while others have much smaller ones )</p>
<p>As for the notes, I don’t think there’s any need to bring notes to MIT. The GIRs are taught very, very differently from the way it’s taught in AP (Calculus and Physics follow the closest, but even then it’s taught in a very MIT-esque fashion), and there are distinct curricula that MIT uses to teach these classes. A few of my friends went as far to bring Campbell to MIT but needless to say never used it at all. You’ll even come to discover that many MIT classes don’t even use the assigned textbook much and just go off on the professor’s own notes for the whole semester (the textbook is supposed to be a resource for you if you need it for background knowledge/to brush up on things).</p>
<p>Chris - thanks for that. 
because if Campbell isn’t useful for anything, then my notes certainly won’t be. :P</p>
<p>so if i’m only temped in a certain room/dorm, should i bring all my stuff with me when i first arrive at mit before orientation? because i’m planning on bringing a lot of heavy stuff, including a huge chair (i’m really picky about what i sit on esp since i may be studying through the night so i’m bringing a more comfy one from home… is this a bad idea…??)</p>
<p>should i just bring clothing, bathroom essentials, etc. for orientation, and then have my parents bring the rest when term actually starts? do any other people do this because i don’t want to be the only person having their parents help them move to a new room…?</p>
<p>^ Do the second. You’re not going to want to lug heavy things around campus.</p>