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

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.