Housing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, students are housed in eleven undergraduate dormitories and eight graduate dormitories. All undergraduate students are required to live in an MIT residence during their first year of study. Undergraduate dormitories are usually divided into suites or floors, and usually have Graduate Resident Assistants, graduate students living among the undergraduates who help support student morale and social activities. Many MIT undergraduate dormitories are known for their distinctive student cultures and traditions.
Both undergraduate and graduate dormitories have a resident Head of House, usually a member of the MIT faculty, living in a special apartment suite within the building. Some larger dormitories have multiple Heads of House, each responsible for a section of the building, who consult together on building-wide issues.
McCormick Hall is a women-only dormitory; all other dormitories are coeducational. Westgate and the Graduate Tower at Site 4 are designated for graduate student family housing, and all other dormitories are reserved for single students.
In addition, a portion of MIT undergraduate sophomores, juniors, and seniors live in MIT-approved fraternities and sororities, and [|Independent Living Groups], collectively known as FSILGs. These are located either on campus or nearby in Cambridge, the Back Bay or Fenway-Kenmore neighborhoods of Boston, or Brookline, Massachusetts.
Overview
Dormitory cultures
Over the years, MIT undergrad dormitories have developed a diverse range of cultures and traditions. With occasional local exceptions, the West Campus dormitories have tended to be more mainstream in their outlook, while the East Side dormitories have been the home of many different subcultures, such as LGBTQ, Goth, counterculture, and anarchist. Since 2002, MIT has required all first-year undergrads to reside in dormitories, partly to control irresponsible abuse of alcohol in some fraternities, which had resulted in the death of a freshman. Since then, the total undergraduate enrollment at MIT has been partially constrained by the number of dormitory spaces available.There are also specialized subgroups of students within some of the larger dormitories, usually based on shared interests, language, or culture. Examples include French House, German House, La Casa, Chocolate City, Juniper, and iHouse.
Upon arrival, first-year students are temporarily assigned to on-campus dormitory housing, based on a preliminary application and a lottery. They occupy this room as a homebase while they participate in Orientation and Residence Exploration week, when the upper-class residents of various dormitories offer special events to highlight their individual cultures and amenities. Students who wish to switch residences apply for the First Year Residence Exchange program, subject to availability of spaces. If they cannot move immediately, they can apply to move at the start of the next semester.
In years when there is a shortage of undergrad housing, a "temporary overflow housing" program is declared. Extra spaces are found by measures such as placing more students in rooms, using suite lounge spaces, renting hotel rooms, and other temporary expedients.
"New Vassar", a 450-bed undergrad dormitory at 189 Vassar Street, was completed in the fall of 2020 and opened for students in the spring semester of 2021.
Design goals
In 2016, the MIT administration published its guidelines for design of new and renovation of older undergraduate dormitories. An ideal size of 350 students per dormitory, organized into "clusters" of 30 students was proposed, consisting of 30-40% singles and the remainder double-occupancy rooms. Each room is to be equipped with furniture made of durable oak wood, designed to be modular and somewhat reconfigurable by the residents. Three bathrooms would be shared by each cluster of rooms, equipped with shared sinks and individually enclosed toilets and showers.The report viewed shared cooking and dining facilities as essential parts of MIT student life and education. Some dormitories would contain dining halls, and others would be designated as "cook-for-yourself" residences. Both types would also have some accommodations for larger group dining and individual or group cooking, including large "country kitchens" for groups of students working together. Informal and formal teaching about diet and cooking would be encouraged, in response to the expressed interest of many MIT students in learning how to cook. Dining halls would be structured for ease of access by other members of the MIT community, including students, faculty, and staff not residing in the host dormitory, to facilitate wider social interactions and events.
The guidelines say that a number of rooms and facilities should be shared dormitory-wide, such as spaces for music rehearsal, games, media viewing, studying, exercising, meeting, and other individual or group activities. Makerspaces are increasingly emphasized to support MIT's founding Mens et Manus ethos and participation in the arts and athletics. A large enclosed exterior space or courtyard should be provided, gated for security while permitting wider community access for special occasions, and protected from solar glare and excessive wind.
The guidelines also state that dormitories should be designed to qualify for LEED gold certification, including central air conditioning to discourage improvised window air conditioner installations and to enable year-round use of the buildings. The new Vassar Street dormitory was specifically designed with these guidelines in mind.
Dormitory dining options
The MIT administration has emphasized incorporation of shared dining facilities into several larger undergraduate dormitories, as places where daily informal social interactions can occur. After discontinuation of "mandatory commons" dining in 1970, MIT continued to operate dining halls in several dormitories on an opt-in meal plan basis. Required meal plans were reinstituted in fall 2011 for residents of several dormitories, despite the vigorous objections of some students., the MIT meal plans offer a mix of choices, required for residents of some dormitories, and optional for all other undergraduates and all grad students., the mandatory meal plan dormitories are:
- Baker House
- Maseeh Hall
- McCormick Hall
- New Vassar
- Next House
- Simmons Hall
Undergraduate dormitories
Baker House
Baker House, located at 362 Memorial Drive, is a co-ed dormitory at MIT designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in 1947–1948 and built in 1949. Its distinctive design has an undulating shape which allows most rooms a view of the Charles River, and the dining hall features a "moon garden" roof. Aalto also designed custom furniture for the building's rooms, many of which are wedge-shaped. Baker House was renovated for its fiftieth anniversary in 1999, modernizing the plumbing, telecommunications, and electrical systems and removing some of the interior changes made over the years that were not in Aalto's original design. Baker House celebrated its 75th Anniversary in 2024 with over 382 house alumni in attendance.The dormitory was named after Everett Moore Baker, an MIT Dean of Students, who died in a plane crash in Egypt in 1949. The dormitory houses 318 undergraduates in single, double, triple, and quadruple rooms.
A Baker House tradition involves dropping an old worn-out piano from the roof. Started by former Baker resident Charles Bruno in 1972, the piano is dropped on Drop Day—the last day MIT students can drop a class with no penalty.
Notable Baker House alumni include Kenneth Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation; Amar Bose, founder of the Bose Corporation and inventor of numerous audio technologies; Alan Guth, astrophysicist and professor of physics at MIT; Timothy Carney, former US Ambassador to Sudan and Haiti; Gerald Sussman, professor of computer science at MIT; Geoffrey A. Landis, NASA scientist and science fiction writer; Ronald T. Raines, professor of chemistry at MIT; Cady Coleman, NASA Astronaut; Wes Bush, former chairman and CEO, Northrop Grumman; Warren Madden, Weather Channel meteorologist; Jonathan Gruber, healthcare economist and political advisor; Charles Korsmo, actor in movies such as Hook and Can't Hardly Wait; Ed Miller, noted poker authority; and Katy Croff Bell, National Geographic ocean explorer.
Burton-Conner House
Burton-Conner House,, is located at 410 Memorial Drive, on the north bank of the Charles River. Burton-Conner houses 344 residents. The building is five stories high, plus a ground floor.Burton-Conner is a combination of two major sections of the former "Riverside" hotel and apartment building, which MIT acquired and reopened as a dormitory in 1950. "Burton House" consists of the 3 westernmost wings, while "Conner Hall" comprises the remaining 2 wings of the extended E-shaped structure. Burton is named after former dean Alfred Edgar Burton. The two sections of the building are physically separated by a firewall above the ground floor, with five residential floors on the Burton side and four on the Conner side.
In the 1960s, a dining hall was added at the rear of Burton-Conner, on the side away from the river. Some years later, the dining hall was shut down and the space became the Porter Room, a shared meeting and student event space. The entire building underwent a complete restructuring during 1970–1971, when the internal layout was changed from a floor orientation to a suite orientation. Today, Burton-Conner amenities include a library with Athena-network computers, a study area, an electronics lab and darkroom, music rooms, a game room, weight and exercise rooms, and a lounge with a snack bar.
In February 2019, the MIT administration announced that Burton-Conner would be closed from June 2020 to August 2022 for a complete renovation. Dormitory residents expressed concerns about interim housing and the effects this might have on dormitory culture. The dormitory was re-opened during the wind-down of the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2022, amid criticism that the building was "without landmarks" due to restrictions on students painting traditional wall murals. Canvas panels were offered instead, but the paperwork, approvals needed, and delays were objected to.