<p>Alright, I know that Tulane has an awesome campus, but exactly which dorms should I apply for when my rooming application comes. What freshman dorms are the best?</p>
<p>You want party or you want quiet or you want community oriented? Also are you make or female?</p>
<p>Edit - OK I just saw your other post so you are male. Therefore no JL for you! At least not officially, lol.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that Sharp and Monroe are the “typical” freshman dorms with more partying and noise than the others. Butler is the Honors dorm, but everyone says you can get in anyway. It is the quietest. Wall is by separate application so you might not get in even if you wanted it, but if you want to try it is “Residential College” style, which means a prof and his family actually live there and everyone participates in dorm life in some way. That is, you have to serve on at least one committee (I think at least one, could be two) so I am guessing there is greater cohesiveness within the entire dorm rather than just a floor or a wing. That’s about it for choices, except I guess Paterson, the “wellness” dorm. They have programs about lifestyle stuff and all, but otherwise it is kind of an in-between dorm with regard to the factors above because it is a mixed dorm of freshmen and upperclassmen. I think I have all that right. Someone feel free to correct me if I got some “fact” wrong about Paterson.</p>
<p>Sharp, Butler and Monroe sound best</p>
<p>well, again, Butler is pretty much the other end of the scale compared to Sharp and Monroe in terms of party and noise quotients. Don’t get me wrong, people in Butler like to have a good time too, but the profile is pretty different. Maybe I am not explaining it well. Help me out here, gabby and/or tulanechild and/or tulane14 and anyone else with recent experience in this subject.</p>
<p>I understand what your saying. It makes total sense. Butler is less into the drinking, etc. Sharp and Monroe are noisy, exciting.</p>
<p>I’ve personally heard great things about Wall.</p>
<p>Wall is great, for the right person. Just like each of the other dorms are great for the right person. That’s what’s nice about each of the dorms having such distinct charactersitics. Well, Sharp and Monroe are virtually identical, and the rest are different from them and each other.</p>
<p>Sportaholic - OK, great. I was just a little confused the way you put Butler in with Sharp and Monroe. But hey, it makes a kind of sense to want one extreme or the other.</p>
<p>I love the way Wall is set up. Both of Miami’s “all freshmen” dorms are the same. A professor and family live there, organize dorm events, etc. Kinda neat.</p>
<p>I’m really on the fence regarding housing next year at Tulane. On one hand, I feel like I should utilize the opportunities afforded the honors students and live in Butler, but on the other hand, I want a true, genuine freshman experience. Any advice?</p>
<p>I lived in JL last semester and had serious roommate issues. Thus, I switched into Butler this semester. I will comment on both, as well as my superficial impressions of the other dorms. Keep in mind that I am probably biased, but I hope this helps:</p>
<p>I really didn’t like JL. I feel like it REALLY cramped my social life. People tended to stay in their rooms and there wasn’t much social interaction going on, if at all. JL was also far from Riley, all my classes, my friend’s dorms, etc. At first, I liked the quiet, but it got old, quickly. I would avoid living there again at all costs. </p>
<p>I absolutely LOVE Butler. I wouldn’t worry about missing out on the typical freshman experience here. There are the quiet kids, the Asian nerds, the sorority girls, AND the partiers, and everything in between. Each floor tends to have its own “personality.” I love how on one floor, guys are having an intense floor-wide video game tournament, while another floor is full of drunk kids wandering back from a night out with their boot pizza in hand. LOL. Butler also has an EXCELLENT location. It’s near PJs, Riley, Bruff, & an equal distance away from most classrooms.</p>
<p>I’m personally not a huge fan of Monroe/Sharp. They are pretty dirty and loud at all hours of the day and night. But if you are going for the typical freshman party experience, you should probably apply for them as your first and second choices, respectively.</p>
<p>Wall is pretty nice. The kids tend to be on the “quirkier” side. A lot of the gay guys live there. The main plus to Wall is the AWESOME study rooms and nicer facilities in general. They also have free pizza a lot too 
I’d consider Wall as long as you aren’t lazy like me and didn’t want to have to fill out an application! </p>
<p>Feel free to PM me with any more specific questions. The only dorm I haven’t been in is Patterson!</p>
<p>Actually it is Paterson, named after Albert Barnett Paterson who was a trustee of the university. I made the same misspelling for a long time before I noticed. The guy must have been a real mover and shaker in New Orleans in his day. He was King of Rex (that’s a Mardi Gras thing for those of you not clued in yet. Rex is considered the most prestigious crewe, and being King used to be one of the most important social acknowledgments possible. Probably still is), but beyond that I can’t find much except that he was head of something called New Orleans Public Service Inc. and that he was awarded the Times-Picayune Loving Cup in 1944 for his “unselfish service toward bettering the position of New Orleans as an industrial city and as a center of culture”. This is the same award President Cowen received last year, and I believe he (Pres. Cowen) was the first non-native to win it. Interesting how history folds back in on itself.</p>
<p>Wow FC, that is really cool!</p>
<p>I’ve never met anyone who lives in Paterson, it is a really really small dorm. Feel free to correct me, but I think it’s supposed to be some kind of “wellness dorm” or something like that, with free yoga classes!</p>
<p>It really depends on what you’re looking for. I wanted a typical dorm experience, so I picked Monroe. I absolutely love living here and have not one single regret. While I’m sure it’s much louder, at times, than the others, I wouldn’t say it’s a constant party. I haven’t had trouble studying in my room; in fact, my roommate and I are both in honors and spend many hours studying in there. If you have any specific questions about Monroe, I would be happy to answer them.</p>
<p>tulane14 - It is indeed a wellness dorm with those classes and various presentations from time to time about healthy lifestyle choices. It is a smaller, older dorm for sure.</p>
<p>From what I can gather seeing the various posts over the years, and of course this has always been generally true, Monroe and Sharp, more than the others really depends on the your floor happens to be populated that year. Sometimes it so happens that the whole wing of that floor, or at least enough of it, are raucous partiers that are loud quite often and the few that are not have to flee to the library or elsewhere to study, and other times it is as gabby says, quiet enough often enough that it really isn’t a major issue. It is a bit of a risk if you want Sharp/Monroe, but then again it isn’t like Tulane doesn’t have dozens of places very close by you can retreat to very easily if you have a loud situation. Not ideal I know, but not that bad either. Most things are a balancing act. It is part of the learning experience for most.</p>
<p>BTW, palmslap to the forehead for me! Someone reminded me in a PM that NOPSI is the utility company in New Orleans, or at least it used to be named that. Not sure if it still is, but after seeing those initials on manhole covers at least 1000, and probably more like 10,000 times, I should have realized. It is so funny how we get into a train of thought where public service=community service and it blocks all common sense thinking, or at least it did for me. But that makes perfect sense that as President of NOPSI Paterson would have been a major player in New Orleans society.</p>
<p>S2 is in Sharp and loves it. He visited all the dorms prior to choosing and wanted Sharp from the outset. He has made many great friends, male and female, on his highly social floor. I have met many of them and they do indeed appear to be a fun group.</p>
<p>I understand that the best way to secure the dorm one wants is to find a roommate and both select the dorm as roommates. (it seemed to work for S2.)</p>
<p>Could someone comment on which dorms do and don’t:</p>
<p>*Have 24-hr study areas
*Single-gender bathrooms
*Have key access from the outside to enter the building</p>
<p>mwestmom - All of them do.</p>
<p>Are dorm requests filled on a rolling basis? If so, does any particular dorm tend to fill quickly?</p>