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There is no cohesive, single source website for information about MIT for prefrosh and prospective students to visit before coming to MIT. This , whether personal information or general information about the MIT experience. This is a problem for a number of reasons: for prospective students, the campus tours provide little information about housing, and while CPW allows prefrosh a great opportunity to dive headfirst into campus life, they often either forget to visit certain locations or ask certain questions or don't have the time to talk to an upperclassmen for a long period of time to really get a sense of the place; some prefrosh can’t afford to visit or have prior obligations. Without readily available information about MIT and on all of the aspects of MIT life, it is difficult for them to decide whether or not MIT would be a good fit for them (and, once they decide on MIT, which dorms would be best). Although there’s no real replacement for visiting campus, we want to provide a tool for students who can’t visit, and help students who can visit optimize their time here and to provide a tool to help facilitate interactions between current MIT students and prospective/prefrosh students.
Ultimately, we would like to create a website that allows its visitors to explore many different aspects of MIT life (hacks, a basic virtual tour, local restaurants, academic centers, etc.). For now, however, we've decided to focus our attention on what our interviews have pulled out as one of the more neglected, but important, components of undergraduate life: the dorms. If time permits, we would add the other components listed above to our map.
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