Eliot House

As Housing Day approaches, FlyBy will serve as your personal rating agency with a complete rundown by a resident of each House. Not that you have any say (River Gods notwithstanding), but at least you'll know whether your portfolio is getting a downgrade.

Should you go to bed Wednesday night praying for residence in Lino's Eliot Inferno? Get a complete analysis after the jump.

Rooming: Middle of the road for a River House, but definitely better than its next door neighbor. Request the 5th floor your sophomore year and you'll coast through with moderately sized (walk-thru) singles for three years, though don't expect to be overwhelmed by large common rooms.  That said, this House boasts excellent senior party suites. If you game the system right your group will get the Cockpit or Ground Zero senior year, otherwise you've failed to grasp the intricacies of Eliot's arcane housing lottery.

Dining Hall: Dimly lit and sometimes pantless. It's not as swamped as dining halls closer to the Yard. Breakfast is often dominated by jocks, but who gets up for that anyway? Brain break is consistently disappointing, with the same monotonous spread of peanut butter, bread, and cereal every. single. night.  And even these spartan offerings are limited by an obnoxious policy of locking down brain break between midnight and 2 a.m. Not that there'd be any food left by then, but it'd be nice to be able to get a fucking soda after you've actually started to make progress on your pset.

House List: Lots of event-based spam hits the Eliot list, but it's worth keeping yourself subscribed for the occasional entertaining YouTube post or random argument. 

House Masters: Definitely an asset for Eliot. Dante scholar Lino Pertile makes a point of memorizing every resident's name and can often be seen chatting up students in the dining hall. He routinely downs a beer or two with students at Eliot's weekly Stein Club and is famous for hilarious rants about all things boating at formal dinners.

House Culture: This House is all about the Fete, and Eliot's strict resident + one policy sends the House List into a frenzy looking for extra tickets every April. That said, it quite doesn't live up to the hype, though perhaps no House formal could. Throughout the year, Eliot takes its weekly Stein Clubs almost as seriously as its Boat Club, whose members, including Lino, flood the dining hall every morning after spring break.  You might think a House blog would be a selling point, but the recently launched El-Word is heavily dominated by Ho-Co and its content can be insular.  Finally, while the new Inferno is no Quincy Grille, it does make up for weak Brain Breaks. We're still waiting for a Gchat ordering option.

The Rating: A.* Overall, you'd be pretty lucky to wake up to shouts of "Domus" next Thursday morning. The somewhat quirky House traditions like Fete and Boat Club end up being real selling points. And with Lino watching over this House, you can be sure you'll never end up sleeping with the fishes.

*Ratings run as such: [AAA > AA > A > BBB > junk > subprime]