<p>Thank you for all of your helpful answers. My questions concern safety: from a crime standpoint, are the neighborhods around M.I.T. safe? Do you feel safe walking around the campus and environs?</p>
<p>Well, MIT is in Cambridge, which is definitely an urban area. So it's not always safe to go running around Cambridge at night by yourself with money hanging out of your pockets.</p>
<p>MIT's campus, although in a city, has a very insular feel -- there's very little crime on campus (other than the usual things like laptops left unattended growing feet and walking away), and I've never personally felt unsafe on campus. The campus police do a good job keeping us safe and keeping trespassers off the property, plus there are always students roaming around campus at all hours of the night. :)</p>
<p>As with any school in a city, you have to exercise a little common sense, but I do feel that MIT is a very safe place. There's certainly not a great deal of crime on campus, and violent crime is unheard of.</p>
<p>Hey Mollie!!</p>
<p>My question has nothing to do with my decision(I am pretty certain on attending MIT :D ). </p>
<p>I stay abroad, but will be visiting the States around 19th April(I am missing CPW :'( . Since I will be coming with my family, we have some extra baggage space. Since I have a number of blank notebooks here at home, I was wondering if they would be of use to me at MIT. If so, I could store them at a close relatives' house in Boston. When I come back in Fall, I am sure I would have no baggage space at all to bring the books. Also, can you think of something else that I can store at Boston?
I will be visiting MIT around 25th-26th April. Yay!!!</p>
<p>OT, but is Simmons air-conditioned?</p>
<p>nope.</p>
<p>new and senior house are :-D</p>
<p>
[quote]
I was wondering if they would be of use to me at MIT. If so, I could store them at a close relatives' house in Boston. When I come back in Fall, I am sure I would have no baggage space at all to bring the books. Also, can you think of something else that I can store at Boston?
[/quote]
For the most part, I think you'd be totally okay just buying things for your room when you get to Boston at the end of the summer -- I mean, really, you just need bathroom stuff, bed linens, and computer/school stuff. You could bring notebooks if you wanted, if you think you might want to take notes in them.</p>
<p>And over30, I have heard that Simmons stays pretty cool in the summer, even though it's not air conditioned. That's what happens when you build a building out of concrete and stone! :D My beloved dorm, on the other hand, heats up like the red brick oven it is.</p>
<p>Do all majors at MIT have a thesis requirement?</p>
<p>No. Actually most don't have a thesis requirement.</p>
<p>Most (all, I think) of the majors in the School of Engineering have some sort of senior capstone, whether or not that's an explicit thesis. MechE has an actual thesis; aero/astro has a senior capstone design class that probably includes writing up a paper. Science majors are likely to have to take a particular lab class that includes a science writing component -- biology majors, for example, take Project Lab and write a publication-worthy paper, frequently on their own undergraduate research.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response and clarification Mollie. Got a favorable report from DD about CPW.</p>
<p>Good to hear. :)</p>
<p>When do freshman register for courses?</p>
<p>Freshmen register for courses during a meeting with their advisors in the week prior to school starting.</p>
<p>If they want to take a HASS-D (humanities</a> distribution) class, I think they will have to enter the lottery over the summer, but more information will definitely be sent out later. (I think the deadline to enter the lottery is mid-August.)</p>
<p>I get the feeling that people find it very alarming that we register for classes so close to school starting (everybody but first-term freshmen will register the day before classes start). It's really not alarming at all, because you know the [url=<a href="http://student.mit.edu/catalog/index.cgi%5Dschedule%5B/url">http://student.mit.edu/catalog/index.cgi]schedule[/url</a>] beforehand, and only a very small subset of classes are limited-enrollment. It's one of the perks of going to not-State-U.</p>
<p>Hey Mollie. I was just wondering about MIT Computing. What exactly are the Athena computers? And do all students need to learn Linux?</p>
<p>Hey Mollie. Do a lot of people use the random lottery for roommates? also, u said people get to try out their dorms/roommates for about a week before school started. can you change ur assigned roommate after that period?</p>
<p>Athena is the campus computing system, and there are Athena [url=<a href="http://web.mit.edu/olh/Clusters/%5Dclusters%5B/url">http://web.mit.edu/olh/Clusters/]clusters[/url</a>] all around campus. They don't require much real computer know-how to use, and if you use Athena, you don't have to drag your laptop around campus or pay for printer paper/ink (you can print to Athena printers). Athena computers are loaded with a bunch of software which is useful for classes, and the computers themselves are probably substantially more powerful than what you have in your dorm room.</p>
<p>That said, you don't have to ever use Athena. (Well, strictly speaking, most engineering majors do have to use Athena at some point for projects. But you don't ever have to use it for personal use.) Particularly now that people carry their laptops around and use campus wireless, fewer people are apparently using Athena for minor tasks.</p>
<p>So bottom line: they're just computers that you can use to do stuff. And you don't have to learn Linux if you just use them for browsing the web, writing papers, etc.</p>
<p>I think the majority of people come to campus without having a prospective roommate in mind, but many (perhaps most?) end up meeting someone during rush/orientation with whom they want to room.</p>
<p>The person and dorm to which you're assigned for Orientation are totally temporary -- if you don't like the person or the dorm, you're free to switch.</p>
<p>Basically, in dorms with multiple-occupancy rooms, after the final lottery, you'll go around and look at various floors/sections of the dorm and rank those from one to whatever. At that point, you can also name one or more people with whom to "staple". If both of you (or all three of you, in the case of a triple) write each other down, you'll be assigned to the same room. If you don't have anyone you want to staple with, the Room Assignment Chair for the dorm will find another unstapled freshman to assign you with.</p>
<p>Butbutbut staples hurt! owie. Mean MITers.</p>
<p><em>Comes at Ben with person-sized stapler</em></p>