Residence Assignments

Housing works a little differently at MIT. Because they need to be different in as many ways as possible, I suppose. In May, all incoming freshman received a thick, brightly colored mailer with details about the different dorms. Using the packet in conjunction with the DVD it included, we filled out an application online that asked for a paragraph about ourselves, whether or not we liked cats, and - critically - our residence preferences. After about a month, the results of the housing lottery appear online.

When you arrive on campus, you check into your dorm but do not unpack. The first couple nights, all the upperclassmen basically throw huge parties in each of their residences with hopes of luring as many unsuspecting freshman to stay there as possible. That's because you can put in a request to swap dorms if you're unhappy or just think you would like a different one more.

The dorm system sucks for kids like me who really liked the dorm they started at - because we can't unpack for a week - but it is definitly neccessary! Each dorm has a very unique culture and if an unsuspecting freshmen is assigned to a dorm with an attitude that doesn't match his own, he pretty much hates it. Several people I know are desperately trying to get out of east campus and into west. (The east campus dorms are very excentric and the west campus dorms are more normal).

The residence to which I was assigned is MacGregor - it was my first choice. It's divided in three levels. The biggest level is an entry, of which there are nine, labeled A through J. You might notice that the set A through J contains ten letters, because i is imaginary and you can't live in an imaginary entry. Those entries are composed of four of five suites each and a shared common area and kitchen. Finally, each suite is composed of four singles and a smaller living room. Just as each residence has its own personality, each entry has its own personality as well at MacGregor. You can read more about MacGregor on their wiki here and the video that they showed on the DVD is linked below.

Freshman excitment

Every year, the upcoming freshman are invited to participate in pre-orientation programs, or FPOPs,  which are little, specialized  week long programs before the real freshman orientation starts on August 27th. They cover anything from biological engineering to history in Boston, from architecture to outward bound. And students are not automatically enrolled; they must apply.

I'm reading about these all throughout May and June and the application deadline is June 17th. Naturally, I wait as long as possible to fill out the application, because why not, right?

Allow me to set the stage: it's Thursday June 16th, about 5 PM and I'm settling in for a boring night; Leigh's in Italy and I don't have any other plans. My phone rings, it's Jordan. He's gearing up to head to another friend's, Matt, house and they want to include me. Sounds great! I'm not doing anything anyway. But wait: this is a sleep over event. The deadlines the next day, but I don't know what time. I need to fill out my application now if I want to participate in FPOP.

I load up the common application, fill out the biological portion, and scroll through to look for the supplementary questions for the programs to which I want to apply. I had already decided on biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, electrical engineering and computer sciences, and ocean engineering, so I didn't spend any time laboring over which questions to answer. I hustle through the application, (Create an acronym for B. R. A. I. N? Really?) and hit send. With that out of the way, I can happily go meet my friends and enjoy the rest of my evening. As an aside, we played risk until about 5 AM and I won despite being pinned into Australia for most of the game.

A week later, everyone in the facebook groups is hearing from their selected FPOP and they're full of colon capital Ds and exclamation points. I haven't heard back from anyone, and I'm starting to get nervous. But, someone posts that the Electrical engineering and computer science group is delaying their responses for 24 hours. No problem, I'll just hear then, right? Wrong.

Little did I know, up at the top of the application was a series of general questions such as "What were your hobbies or extracurriculars in highschool?" that I skipped completely. Apparently the admissions committees don't really appreciate it when you skip the only questions that get sent to every single program.

Although I was disappointed by my hurried application, I'm over it. I'm sure by my senior year I won't be missing spending an extra week at school, and there are plenty of people who have other reasons for not attending the FPOPs. This is, however, a great lesson and I'm happy to learn it on something of such little importance. I can happily report that I haven't missed a question on an application since.

In other news, we have our plane tickets for the regular orientation date, August 27th, we sent in the first check for tuition, and dorm assignments are released in a few days. I'll serve up a fresh post with all the details about where I'm living for the next 9 months as soon as I can.
Lastly, look what I found! http://www.capricorn.org/~akira/home/lockpick/