Graduate Housing Allocation

Ashdown House Transition Information for current Ashdown (W1) Residents In the summer of 2008 the heart and soul of the Ashdown House Community will be transplanted from its present location on Memorial Drive that it has occupied since 1933 (building W1), to a new facility located on the northwest side of the MIT campus at 235 Albany Street (building NW35). This new location is in within one block of MIT Graduate Houses Sidney-Pacific, the Warehouse, and Edgerton.
	Ashdown (NW35) 235 Albany Street Expected occupancy in the Fall of 2008
			Click here to see current pictures of the Construction of NW35
Room types Descriptions (540 beds) # of Units # of Graduate Student Beds # of Incubator Beds Efficiency Apartments Studio apartment for one person, including kitchen facilities and a private bathroom. Pictures available 177 163 13 Small Efficiency Apartments Smaller studio apartment for one person, including kitchen facilities and a private bathroom. 28 20 8 2 Bedroom Apartments Two people will share an apartment with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen facilities and a bathroom. 45 54 36 3 Bedroom Apartments Three people will share an apartment with three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen facilities and a bathroom. 19 57 0 3 Bedroom Duplex Apartments In these three bedroom apartments, the layout is very similar to the 2 Bedroom Apartments with a third bedroom up a flight of stairs, in a "monitor" on the roof, as depicted in the photo above. 13 39 0 3 Bedroom Suites Three people will share an apartment with three bedrooms and a bathroom.  These apartments are the same size as the 2-bedroom apartments, but with no living room or kitchen.  These apartments are designed for the Graduate Student on a tight budget. 50 150 0 The future Ashdown will be a mix of suite and apartment style accommodations. There will be only private bedrooms and each assignment will be for a bedroom within an apartment or suite. There will be floor kitchens and lounges located near the 3 Bedroom Suites. Floorplans are now available online to people with MIT Certificates on their computer: First Floor Fourth Floor Second Floor Fifth Floor Third Floor Typical units floorplans .
NW35 Assignments Timeline: February: W1 residents' room selection: Must be fully registered student during the spring semester and a current resident of Ashdown. Must intend to be a fully registered student in the Fall of 2008. W1 residents who do not enter this lottery for a room will not receive a room in NW35 unless they enter the regular May allocation for assignment. April 1: Deadline by which W1 residents must commit to moving to NW35 by signing their on-line housing license. If residents do not sign this license, and later want to move to NW35, they must either join the Fall Housing Allocation or the Waiting List to obtain an assignment to NW35. License cancellations: Residents who receive their room through the W1 Lottery must be a fully registered students in the Fall of 2008 to move into this room assignment. Students who graduate or are otherwise not registered for Fall 2008 must notify the Graduate Housing Office of their cancellation at least 30 days before their move-in date to avoid rent responsibility. If you graduate but want to move to NW35 as a visitor (such as a postdoc), you will need to cancel your assignment to NW35 and join the visitors Waiting List that will open on June 30, 2008. Students who are registered in the Fall but choose to not move into NW35 will be charged a $250 housing cancellation fee. They must also notify the Graduate Housing Office of their cancellation at least 30 days before their move-in date to avoid rent responsibility. To cancel your assignment, please send email to graduatehousing@mit.edu. All cancellations must be in writing. April: Adjustment Lottery: W1 and Green Hall residents who sign the NW35 license agreement can change their room assignment through this lottery. Residents of the other Single Graduate Housing buildings (Tang, Sidney-Pacific, and Edgerton) who are selected to be Ashdown officers in the fall may also enter this lottery. Officers selected from other buildings will receive a one-year non-renewable housing assignment to Ashdown that will expire on August 15, 2009. Officers will serve from April 2008 until May 2009. Here are some good reasons to consider serving as an officer in Ashdown House: Residents of other buildings who would like to be Ashdown officers will be able te enter the April Adjustment Lottery to receive an assignment in NW35 for the fall. These entrants will be able to choose a specific room and perhaps even particular roommates before room assignments are made in the Graduate Housing Fall Allocation in May. Ashdown officers can accumulate seniority points that can be used to choose a better room in the future. The Tirsty Ear Pub will be located in NW35. There will be a dining program in NW35. Ashdown rsidents can be part of the thriving graduate community in the northwest part of campus. Anyone interested in serving as an officer in NW35 can send an e-mail to ahec-offcord@mit.edu. The deadline to apply to be an Ashdown officer is April 15, 2008. All students who are accepted to be Ashdown Officers will be notified by AHEC. April 15 : Last day for graduate students to apply for Ashdown officer positions April 16: Adjustment Lottery opens April 23: Adjustment Lottery closes April 24: Results to Housing Office May: General Housing Allocation for New Students and Expiring students. Residents of current Graduate Housing buildings whose licenses expire in May or August of 2008 must enter this Allocation to receive housing for the remainder of their time as a student at MIT. This Allocation is also for students who do not currently live on campus and wish to move to campus and those who are new to MIT. NW35 will be an option in this Allocation. Those who signed the NW35 license agreement but might need family housing in the fall can enter this Allocation for family housing. Please e-mail graduatehousing@mit.edu for details. May 16 : Last day for graduate students to apply to Graduate Housing Allocation for Fall Housing May 23: Graduate Housing Fall Allocation assignments sent out; Second round of Allocation begins May 30: Deadline to accept first round assignments; Last day for students to apply to second round of Allocation June: Room assignments made for non-W1 residents. As part of receiving an assignment to NW35 students will be asked to fill out a brief preference form for things like: Do you like the apartment hot or cold? Are you messy or neat? Are you a vegetarian or meat-eater, etc. The Graduate Housing Office will use this information whenever possible to place these residents. If residents assigned from the W1 lottery will be having other students assigned to their apartments, they may also fill out this survey to help Graduate Housing make the best possible matches. On June 30 the Graduate Housing Waiting List opens for those who did not enter NW35 Lottery or Graduate Housing Fall Allocation. Non-graduate student affiliates of MIT can also enter this waiting list. Such affiliates (called "visitors" by Graduate Housing) are typically postdocs, special students, cross-registered students, exchange students, and research staff. July: Visitor assignments, if space available. If NW35, or any Graduate Housing building, is not full after the Allocation, assignments will be made from the waiting list. Fully enrolled graduate students will be given priority on this list, but if there are spaces available for which there are no graduate students waiting, Graduate Housing will send housing offers to MIT affiliates who are not students. Proof of MIT affiliation will be required. August: Move to NW35. As the plans for moving to NW35 become more detailed, information about the move will be added here.
W1 Lottery Policies There are enough rooms in NW35 that all eligible W1 residents who want rooms will be able to get them. We anticipate that there will be no difficulty receiving your desired room type, because enough current residents have indicated preferences for 3-bedroom suites and 3-bedroom apartments that we expect to be able to accommodate everyone. The lottery will determine your actual room number and you will be asked to rank individual rooms. This lottery will be similar to past Ashdown internal lotteries in the following ways: Lottery will be run by AHEC Officers NW35 Room Ranker will be available - this is currently being developed by Housing and AHEC Floor plans will be available here, you will need certificates to access them. Ashdown seniority points will be used to determine the order in which assignments will be given Those with equal points will be put in a random order Results will be actual room numbers Some things are different: Coed apartments are allowed in all apartments. Unlike other Graduate Housing buildings, you may choose co-ed apartment mates. We will honor all requests for single-sex apartments. All requests for single-sex suites will be honored for the duration of your residency All eligible residents must enter this lottery and "No room" will be a valid option. To ensure that no one has missed this lottery by accident, we will be reminding everyone to enter the lottery. If you do not want to move to NW35 please enter the lottery and choose "no room" to avoid getting repeated messages from the Housing Office. This will also save us from having to nag you. This lottery is your only method to guarantee an assignment to NW35 for Fall 2008. Residents may apply as part of a group AND as an individual, this is also known as "stapling". This is new to Ashdown for this lottery. Each group that enters will be considered a Virtual Person or "VP". Each person in a VP may also list individual preferences. If the VP cannot be assigned to a space, the individual's preferences will be considered for available spaces they have ranked. If a VP is assigned, the constituent individuals will be removed from the lottery Seniority points for VPs will be the sum of the constituent members points. VPs will be ranked in with individual persons, with those with the same number of points sorted in a random order. Groups may only apply to apartments where the number of individuals in the group equals the number of rooms in the apartment. For example: 2 people may only apply to 2 bedroom apartments and you must have 3 people to apply to 3 bedroom units. Assigned groups may decide actual room allocation within the apartment, or you may request to have AHEC or the Housing Office make the room assignments. Rooms set aside for the W1 Incubator will not be available in this lottery. Those rooms are described and listed below.
W1 Incubator in NW35 On December 6, 2007, MIT announced that W1 will be completely renovated before reopening as an undergraduate residence in the fall of 2010. From the fall of 2008 until W1 reopens, a group of approximately 50 undergraduates, several GRTs and the new W1 Housemasters will reside as a group in NW35. This is known as the "W1 Incubator" A group consisting of the W1 and NW35 Housemasters, Housing Office Staff and current Ashdown Officers decided where in the building to place this incubator. This decision was informed by a poll of current Ashdown residents indicating that most Ashdown residents would prefer to live in 3-bedroom apartments and 3-bedroom suites in the new building. The incubator will be placed on the 1st and 2nd floors of building 2 <add link to map of building numbers>. This space is currently slated to hold 32 efficiency and 18 2-bedroom apartments. Some of this space will need to be temporarily reconfigured while the incubator is in NW35. The following list is the room numbers that will not be available for Graduate Students: 1st floor efficiencies 2nd floor efficiencies 1st floor 2-bedrooms 2nd floor 2-bedrooms 1021 1043 2021 2043 1023 2023 1032 1045 2032 2045 1025 2025 1033 1047 2033 2047 1026 2026 1035 1049 2035 2049 1027 2027 1037 1050 2037 2050 1028 2028 1039 1051 2039 2051 1029 2029 1041 1052 2041 2052 1030 2030         1031 2031         1046 2046 The current Ashdown Housemasters, the Orlandos, will be working closely with the new W1 Housemasters to make this co-habitation as smooth as possible.
Advantages for those continuing into Ashdown (NW35) Priority Room Preference in NW35- NW35 room assignments to W1 residents will be assigned based on the Ashdown seniority point system which gives credit based on how long a student has lived in Ashdown with additional credit for being an Ashdown House officer. These assignments will be done in February before other students are assigned to the building. Continuing Status in NW35 - All fully registered MIT Graduate Students living in Ashdown (W1) during the  2007-2008 school year who will be fully enrolled MIT Graduate Students during the 2008-2009 school year will be offered the opportunity to move to the new Ashdown (NW35) for the 2008-2009 school year. These students will all have Continuing Status when they move into NW35. In order to take advantage of this, current residents must enter the NW35 room assignments lottery in February and sign their 2008-2009 license by April 1, 2008. Continuous housing from W1 to NW35 - Ashdown House licenses will end June 14, 2008, instead of the traditional date of August 15, 2008. However, any residents who are assigned rooms and sign licenses for the 2008-2009 school year will be guaranteed housing until they move into NW35 if they desire it. These residents will also have the option of canceling their 2008 summer housing with no penalty, if they prefer, and storing their belongings in W1 for the summer. Assistance Moving - The Housing Office will provide moving assistance for all residents moving from W1 to NW35. Housing will provide the following: Boxes Moving labels Carts and dollies Paper shredders for unwanted confidential documents Dumpsters Thirsty Ear Pub and other Ashdown Common Spaces - The Thirsty Ear Pub will be moving along with the Ashdown House population to NW35. Upon relocation in NW35, the Pub will be adding a menu of pub food to it's current offerings of beer, wine and popcorn. Ashdown has many other popular community rooms, an exercise room and a dark room that will be moving to the new location as well. Coed Apartments - Most buildings in Graduate Housing only allow single- sex apartment mates. The exceptions are 2-bedroom apartments in Tang and Edgerton. Ashdown allows any apartments to be coed upon request.
Help/FAQ • graduatehousing@mit.edu