Answer these 13 questions and we’ll reveal the perfect dorm for you! by Ellie F. '28
What does your favorite dorm animal say about where you should live?
The Quiz:
HEY GUYS UPDATE THE LINK DOESNT WORK ANYMORE ILL TRY TO FIX IT SOB
Behind the Scenes:
This started months ago as some joke-turned-blog-idea on the MIT class of 2029 Discord Server, where I was helping out answering questions from the prefrosh. MIT has very strong dorm culture, and each of our dorms has its own traditions, in-jokes, and lifestyles. I thought that writing an interactive Buzzfeed-style quiz would be a fun way to find interesting patterns and learn more about the people in dorms overall.
The plan was to create some questions and disseminate them through dormspam, our undergraduate-wide emailing list. Then, I could analyze the answers and their corresponding dorms to create the quiz for the blogs. Despite multiple months of sitting on this idea, I didn’t start creating questions until the day before the dorm decision form was released for prefrosh (sorry that this quiz is so late lol). I dormspammed the survey in the middle of my Asian Dance Team showcase and watched in awe as responses started rolling in. (I think I got like 50 responses in 10 minutes?? what)
A couple days later, I started the data analysis (instead of studying for finals, of course). Turns out I’m bad at spreadsheets, so I just made a bunch of jank formulas to find each question’s response distribution by dorm. Then, I found an online personality quiz maker and translated those results to the quiz’s answer scoring system. This took longer than it should have.
Fun Stats!
Here’s the results spreadsheet (it’s a copy) if you want to do your own digging: COOL DATA HERE
Quick Numbers
- As of right now, there are 300 responses! WOW :0
- Burton-Conner had the most responses, with 42
- Random had the least responses, with 13
- However, Random had the highest response per capita, with 14% of all Random residents responding to the poll.
- New Vassar had the lowest response per capita, with only 3.3% of New Vassar residents providing their data to my quiz.
Most Agreed Upon Answers (among dorm)
- 100% — MacGregor, with 0 roommates across the board. MacGregor in fact only has singles, so this shouldn’t be very surprising!
- 91.7% — Random, naming a nearby grocery store as what they can’t live without. Random is a cook-for-yourself dorm on Massachusetts Ave., a very short walk to Target or Hmart, so it must be very convenient!
- 85.7% — New Vassar, agreeing that they couldn’t live without air conditioning. As the newest dorm, one of New Vassar’s attractions is being one of two dorms with built-in AC.
- 83.3% — Random, also with 0 roommates. Random is mostly singles, with just a few doubles per floor, so this checks out.
- 81.8% — New House, agreeing with New Vassar on the necessity of AC.
- 81.3% — Maseeh, as the closest dorm to main campus, values proximity to campus above all, to little surprise.
Other fun facts!
Is it true that Baker has the most athletes? 73.1% of Baker residents responded that they were athletes, followed by 37.5% of Maseeh and 28.6% of New Vassar.
While “baby’s first speed rap (l,m,n,o,p)”, with 35.7% of responses, tended to be the crowd’s favorite alphabet section, the East Side dorms, East Campus (EC) and Random, had a marked preference for the “weirdo/goth letters (v,w,x,y,z)”, which won 30.6% of East Side votes.
Maseeh, the closest dorm to campus, seems to love convenience as much as the farthest dorms want it. 50% of Maseeh respondents chose the superpower of being able to travel as quickly as a car, compared to 44.8% for Next House and 50% for Simmons, the two farthest dorms on Dorm Row.
The most ~aesthetic~ dorms were Random Hall with 41.7% for Dark Academia and McCormick with 38.1% for Cottagecore. No other dorms had more votes for one of the listed aesthetics than none of them.
Most dorms love cooking for themselves during Independent Activities Period (IAP), when meal plans are optional for everyone. Baker was the only dorm where any option was selected more than cooking — a whopping 65.3% of Baker respondents chose to eat at Maseeh, compared to only 31.3% of Maseeh respondents. MacGregor is home to the most scavengers, with 41.7% hunting down free food for sustenance. On the other hand, 44.4% of Nexties have given up and simply responded with “food?”.
Only two respondents preferred zero windows (honestly I expected more). Most people showed a strong preference to one or two windows, likely the amount of windows in their own dorm room. Predictably, 64.3% Simmons residents showed their love for 18 windows, or possibly even more.
Burton Conner (BC) has the biggest chunk of partiers, with 65.8% of BC residents partying on a Friday night, followed by EC with 48.6% and New House with 42.4%.
The cat dorms really love their cats! 73% of EC and and 66.7% of Random voted for cats as the best dorm animal, and cats also won over BC, MacGregor, and New House. Next House, Baker, and McCormick have forged strong bonds with their rats, and New Vassar and Simmons had more dog people (Simmons has a house dog!!)
Graphs Generated by Google
Feast thy eyes, and thanks for reading!
