<p>question for current IU students or anyone else knowledgeable on the subject - </p>
<p>my cousin is going to be attending IU and is about to send in deposit. what are the best dorms for freshmen ? for him i want academically focused ones, not partying ones ! are there any really great ones that fill up right away?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>bumpbumpbump</p>
<p>There are academically themed dorms that might be good. There is an Honors dorm, but my son was in it last year, and he said there WAS lots of partying going on. Other than themed dorms, a freshman cannot choose particular dorms, just "neighborhoods." To avoid the worst partying dorms, I would suggest NOT requesting the NE neighborhood. That contains McNutt, the top freshman party dorm.</p>
<p>central would be a good bet. i'm in wright, and it's relatively quiet, and a great location. teter is similar. eingeman may not have as good a location, but since it is newer, the rooms are bigger and nicer. all in all central is probably your best bet, unless your son's gonna be in the music school. then he would want to go with southeast</p>
<p>so central seems to be the best bet ??</p>
<p>How likely are you to get a single if you request one?</p>
<p>Singles are pretty easy to get. There are actually a shortages of doubles. This year many people (like 90 or so) requesting doubles ended up dorming in the conferences rooms and study halls until the situation could be sorted out, which took about 2-3 weeks or so.</p>
<p>Is it just friends requesting to room together? I really don't see an advantage in having a double. Almost everybody that I know says that they can't stand their roomate.</p>
<p>It seems that they try to pair up people from the same general section of the country. Maybe the idea is that they can share transportation home, or have common interests already. Having said that, in my son's dorm about 1/5 of the guys in doubles already switched roommates (it's probably a similar ratio for the women). There is, of course, a difference in price between singles and doubles--which I think is about $600 a semester.</p>
<p>My son is happy he has a single--and he can decide when to have people over--and when they need to leave so he can sleep or study.</p>
<p>My son's reason for choosing a double his freshman year was strictly financial. He didn't end up with a roommate from a similar part of the country, as we are in Oregon, and his roommate was from New York.</p>
<p>He got along fine with his roommate; however, his roommate decided he wanted more privacy, so he moved out into a single. My son asked for another roommate (again, for financial reasons). As luck would have it, they never found one for him, so he ended up with a cheap single for the rest of the year. (They couldn't charge him single price, since he was willing to have a roommate. Pretty good deal for him!)</p>
<p>No, there's no method to roommate pairing, unlike at many other schools, it is 100% random (unless you count gender). Easiest setup for them, not the best for compatability issues, but in general, people with roommate problems are in the minority</p>
<p>zippo, thanks for clearing that up. I was only going by what I observed in my son's hall (Bryan Hall in McNutt). Apparently, it doesn't apply to the school at-large.</p>
<p>What is the Collins Center like? And if I send in my deposit in the beginning of April, how likely is it that I will be able to get a dorm in the Central neighborhood? $50 of the deposit isn't refundable and I won't hear from other colleges until April. I'm not going to make a final decision until then and so I don't want to waste $50 if I might not go there.</p>
<p>I know I started another thread about it, but could anyone tell me what the Mason Hall apartments are like?</p>
<p>Calcruzer, I'm not sure they try to pair people up from the same part of the country. My son lives with a boy from New York, though we're from Illinois, and across the hall is a boy who lives twenty minutes from us. </p>
<p>Not complaining, however - my son and his roomie are very compatible and they've had a great time this year.</p>
<p>what is collins center like? how likely is it that i get a spot there if i file in april? I wont be hearing from one other school till april 15th.</p>
<p>I was thinking of living in a single at first, and then if I met people that I would be okay with sharing a room, then maybe request to dorm with them second semester. Would I be able to do this?</p>
<p>Collins is real nice, newest dorm on campus and the only one that actually looks like a college dorm. It's hard to get a room in Collins, similar to McNutt and Briscoe. Rooms are a bit smaller than others though. Collins has lots of artsy people in it.</p>
<p>How likely is it that i will get a dorm in Central neighborhood if I apply very early April?</p>
<p>Early April will likely mean you won't get in the central neighborhood.</p>