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As a former MIT applicant this is actually news to me considering I ended up going to a school where I mostly don't see any self-segregation. What exactly goes

As a former MIT applicant this is actually news to me considering I ended up going to a school where I mostly don't see any self-segregation. What exactly goes on there? I have a problem with your argument though, how does encouraging segregation reduce domestic strife? You're assuming that simply being with another group would immediately cause hostilities. Even if it does remove strife, college is only 4 years! It hardly seems worth it to avoid some discomfort you will likely face more and more in the future.

philwelch 17y ago
People do not usually share a bedroom with anyone they are not having sex with after college. Dorms are a rather unusual situation in that respect. Even sharing an apartment with people you don't get on with can be a problem in terms of generating conflict. Roommate stress (especially for introverted conflict-avoidant people like me) is only a negative thing in the context of being a serious student. It's an essential thing to avoid.
- kragen 17y ago
  People do not usually share a bedroom with anyone they are not having sex with after college. Your experience of the world appears to be very limited. If I had to guess, I'd guess you'd never lived anywhere poor.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    You're right, but the intersection between that population and the population of university graduates is, I'd imagine, fairly low. And there are differences in race relations across the spectrum of economic classes.
aston 17y ago
The dorms at MIT all have a very strong cultural component (Do you like German culture? Do you like pyrotechnics? Do you want to avoid living with guys?) As an incoming freshman you're able to rank the dorms you'd like to live in, and you're placed into one of them by a lottery weighted by everyone's rankings. Once placed within a dorm, there's a further step of in-house rush which allows even further self-segregation, as within each dorm there're still more specific identities. The net effect is that most everyone lives with people like them (or at least people they like and vice versa). Given the pretty heavy strain placed on you academically, it's in the school's best interest to reduce stress anywhere else in your life that they can. Admissions takes great pains to make sure the school itself is diverse (50/50 guy-girl ratio at a tech school, for example), and so your interactions with other students are guaranteed to force you to work through any diversity-related issues you may have coming in.

philwelch 17y ago

People do not usually share a bedroom with anyone they are not having sex with after college. Dorms are a rather unusual situation in that respect. Even sharing an apartment with people you don't get on with can be a problem in terms of generating conflict. Roommate stress (especially for introverted conflict-avoidant people like me) is only a negative thing in the context of being a serious student. It's an essential thing to avoid.

kragen 17y ago
People do not usually share a bedroom with anyone they are not having sex with after college. Your experience of the world appears to be very limited. If I had to guess, I'd guess you'd never lived anywhere poor.
- philwelch 17y ago
  You're right, but the intersection between that population and the population of university graduates is, I'd imagine, fairly low. And there are differences in race relations across the spectrum of economic classes.

aston 17y ago

The dorms at MIT all have a very strong cultural component (Do you like German culture? Do you like pyrotechnics? Do you want to avoid living with guys?) As an incoming freshman you're able to rank the dorms you'd like to live in, and you're placed into one of them by a lottery weighted by everyone's rankings. Once placed within a dorm, there's a further step of in-house rush which allows even further self-segregation, as within each dorm there're still more specific identities. The net effect is that most everyone lives with people like them (or at least people they like and vice versa). Given the pretty heavy strain placed on you academically, it's in the school's best interest to reduce stress anywhere else in your life that they can. Admissions takes great pains to make sure the school itself is diverse (50/50 guy-girl ratio at a tech school, for example), and so your interactions with other students are guaranteed to force you to work through any diversity-related issues you may have coming in.