Undergraduates are guaranteed four-year housing in one of MIT's 11 undergraduate dormitories.[152] Out of the 11 dormitories, 10 are currently active due to one of the residential halls, Burton Conner, undergoing renovation from 2020 to 2022.[153] Those living on campus can receive support and mentoring from live-in graduate student tutors, resident advisors, and faculty housemasters.[154] Because housing assignments are made based on the preferences of the students themselves, diverse social atmospheres can be sustained in different living groups; for example, according to the Yale Daily News staff's The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2010, "The split between East Campus and West Campus is a significant characteristic of MIT. East Campus has gained a reputation as a thriving counterculture."[155] MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families.[156]
MIT has an active Greek and co-op housing system, including thirty-six fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs).[157] As of 2015, 98% of all undergraduates lived in MIT-affiliated housing; 54% of the men participated in fraternities and 20% of the women were involved in sororities.[158] Most FSILGs are located across the river in Back Bay near where MIT was founded, and there is also a cluster of fraternities on MIT's West Campus that face the Charles River Basin.[159] After the 1997 alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger, a new pledge at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in the dormitory system starting in 2002.[160] Because FSILGs had previously housed as many as 300 freshmen off-campus, the new policy could not be implemented until Simmons Hall opened in that year.[161]
In 2013–2014, MIT abruptly closed and then demolished undergrad dorm Bexley Hall, citing extensive water damage that made repairs infeasible. In 2017, MIT shut down Senior House after a century of service as an undergrad dorm. That year, MIT administrators released data showing just 60% of Senior House residents had graduated in four years. Campus-wide, the four-year graduation rate is 84% (the cumulative graduation rate is significantly higher).[162]