<p>The tubs are a great thing to have, especially the long, thin kind with wheels that slide right under the bed. I used a bunch of those this year and they were great.</p>
<p>USM, I’ll see if I can find it. If I do, I’ll drop it into a new thread. Yes, we planned to buy locally what didn’t make sense to either put in limited suitcase space or was convenient for shipping. It’s the one thing that I envied those who lived within driving distance for. Otoh, for us it was much more of an adventure sending D “all the way across country to Smith,” something which amazed our friends and astounded our enemies.</p>
<p>My D uses big duffels from LLBean: the advantage is that, once unpacked, they stuff under the bed (unlike tubs) and they’re light. Also, we had them from camp years. </p>
<p>Lamps: at check-in last year, at the whole walk-around-the-gym and pick up fliers affair, there was a table run by the electric company that offered quite nice, cheap, lamps as well as fluorescent bulbs to go in them. Discounted. </p>
<p>Fan: vital.</p>
<p>Are there laptops given by the school , if so which one ? I currently have Dell Inspiron which is only going to last me till end of high school ( it started acting up ) . I am NOT a Mac person I find them kind of hard to use , are all the school computer Macs ?</p>
<p>Both platforms are in use at Smith, with a bit of an edge to the Macs. They don’t GIVE you a laptop, you must either bring one or buy one there. If you buy it at Smith, it will be supported by their tech staff, and you can get discounts.</p>
<p>The one you buy there it a standard one or can you buy any type ?</p>
<p>They sell a range of models at the Smith College computer store, both Macs and PCs. The benefit to buying a computer at Smith is that, if it breaks, you can bring it to the computer store on campus for repairs. The campus store will not repair computers except those purchased from them (at least, this was the policy when I was there, it may have changed). </p>
<p>There are a couple of Mac repair services in Northampton though, and a Best Buy at the nearby mall that will look at PCs, so for most people it’s not a huge difference. </p>
<p>You can buy and bring any computer you want to campus though, people use all different kinds.</p>
<p>S&P, the computer repair policy hasn’t changed. Nik2593, should you eventually come here, feel free to buy any type that you feel comfortable using and that will support the basic functions you will need as a Smith student (internet browsing, word processing, viewing of DVDs and online videos, making slideshows or the occasional spreadsheet). I don’t recommend a netbook or MacBook Air.</p>
<p>I’m may be planning on requesting for a house with a kitchenette (I’m looking at Albright actually) and I’m wondering if there will be pots and pans already there or if I have to buy my own ones. Also, does the kitchenettes usually have refridgerators that students can use?</p>
<p>Is it a disadvantage to live in a house without a dining hall? I still can’t decide if I’ll prefer a dining hall or kitchenette (I think it’s helpful for when I’m craving home made food).</p>
<p>Also, how big are the closets in the room? Are hangers provided or do we have to get them ourselves?</p>
<p>Lastly, not very relevant to this thread but how do we ship boxes to Smith and what’s the most economical way to do so? I’m a international student and my Dad went to Illinois on a work trip so I stuffed some of my clothes inside his suitcase… now I have to teach him how to mail it to Smith. He’s coming back and going again so I’ll make him bring more things. It’s going to be quite heavy and bulky because it’s a bunch of winter clothes and stationery.</p>
<p>I think you’re getting confused between houses with full kitchens and kitchenettes. </p>
<p>Kitchenettes are just rooms that usually have a refrigerator, a microwave, and sometimes a table. A few of them have toaster ovens or something similar, but most do not. Every house has at least one kitchenette, most have one on every floor. They’re meant to let students re-heat leftovers or store food if they don’t have their own fridge in their room. They’re not full service kitchens, they do not have stoves or ovens. Sometimes they have tables in them. I’ve known students to bring their own rice cookers or instant hot water makers to keep in the kitchenette, and my friends and I have been known to whip up a meal on a George Foreman grill there from time to time, but keep in mind you’re not allowed to bring hot plates. </p>
<p>Houses that do NOT have dining halls, usually have full kitchens that students can use. These kitchens are on the ground floor, and they have refrigerators, a stove, an oven, and usually have some pots and pans and rudimentary supplies, but whatever is there is what students have brought or cast off over the years, so if you are particular about your equipment, you should plan on getting your own pans or dishes. And if you leave them in the house kitchen, other people in the house will use them, so if you want to keep them for yourself, be sure to take them to your room. </p>
<p>Houses that DO have dining halls will also have kitchens, but those kitchens will be for dining services staff ONLY. Students are not allowed to use the kitchens that serve dining halls or even to be in them unless they’re working for dining services or picking up the tea trolley from dining services on Friday. The kitchens are locked in between meals and when the dining halls are closed.</p>
<p>You will need to bring your own hangers. Closet size varies a lot depending on the house. </p>
<p>In terms of shipping, the best thing is to not ship things but rather to buy what you need when you get to Smith. Particularly if its stationary or something else that you can get easily and cheaply in Massachusetts. It’s expensive at first, but once you buy stuff, you can keep it all four years. If you can, you should really try to just bring clothes with you, and then get whatever else you need once you arrive. You won’t need really heavy winter clothes until late November and sometimes not until after Christmas break, so don’t worry about sending that early. Also, it may be better to buy winter clothes from a store in New England because they will stock things that are suitable to the local climate. </p>
<p>I’ve heard that the best way to ship things in the US is via FedEx Ground services. You should at some point get information about what your mailbox at Smith will be (probably in July?) so you’ll have an address to ship things to. I wouldn’t advise sending anything until you have that address or some other shipping information from Smith. If you are mailing books, magazines, DVDs, or CDs you can send them at a media mail rate, which is very cheap but ONLY for media items, via the US Postal Service.</p>
<p>Re: computers. It used to be - and I assume it still is given the current policies at another university with which I’m familiar – that you can buy only Macs or Dells (Windows) through the Smith computer store. It doesn’t matter if you have another brand, but you’ll have to bring that to campus, order it online, or buy it locally rather than through Smith. Although it’s nice that Smith IT will help you with your computer if you have issues, even ones as simple as connecting to the network, I believe my daughter used them for her Mac only twice. Keep in mind that many issues require that the IT staff send your computer away to be serviced and that you’ll be out of a computer for a couple of weeks if that happens. It’s much better to purchase a reliable brand than a cheap one – although if you can get both, it’s even better.</p>
<p>If you want to buy a Mac, definitely go with the MacBook Pro. If you order it online instead of one of the Smith packages (not much of a bargain but they give you all need), make sure you go through Apple’s education store. You’ll get $100-150 off your computer. You can also go into an Apple Store as long as you can prove that you’ll be or are a college student.</p>
<p>IT would not help my daughter at all when she got a virus last fall because she bought her netbook from Best Buy. They only support the computers that are purchased through Smith.</p>
<p>Fortunately Best Buy was only a few miles away and the Geek Squad took care of it because it was under their warranty.</p>
<p>^^^ Yes, that’s the problem with not buying through Smith. As an aside, doesn’t Smith provide free security software to all students? Many universities/colleges do to keep their own system free of viruses and malware. If a student’s computer has a virus and gets plugged into the network, it can infect everyone’s computer. My husband once unintentionally infected two universities and a defense contractor’s outside (non-classified) system in a single week because our sister-in-law had used infected flash memory on my father-in-law’s computer, which my husband also used for an hour. Oops. :)</p>
<p>Regarding living in a house with a dining hall or without: I lived in both this year, and I found that I preferred the convenience of the full kitchen available in the non-dining hall house to the convenience of the dining hall in the house. You aren’t always going to want to eat what is in your house’s dining hall, meaning you may end up walking somewhere else anyway, but with a full kitchen you know you can always whip up whatever you want, assuming you have the groceries for it. </p>
<p>If you do end up in Albright, or anywhere else in Elm Street housing, you’re literally right across the street or next door to a lot of dining halls, such as Chase-Duckett, Cutter-Ziskind, Northrup-Gillett (I guess it’s just going to be Northrup now), and Lamont. Go just a little bit further and you can be at Hubbard or Chapin. Honestly, even in the worst of weather, it’s not going to be hard to go next door for dinner. </p>
<p>Also, living in a house without a dining hall, you don’t have to worry about your room smelling like swordfish or anything else dining services is preparing down below.</p>
<p>One-sentence summary: Living in a house without a dining hall was, in my experience, the better option.</p>
<p>My daughter is thinking about bringing her desktop pc as well as a laptop (we haven’t bought the laptop yet), because the pc is set up for gaming already, and she feels she can get a more economical laptop if it doesn’t have to have gaming capabilities. Plus she says her pc is better for gaming anyway. My question is how secure are the rooms; is there much theft? Do students use their laptops in class a lot? My daughter actually likes to take notes on paper (the old-fashioned way!)</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of anyone’s laptop being stolen from their room, and have only heard once or twice of it being stolen from a library or cafe or something. Smith is, in general, a very safe place, and that includes theft.</p>
<p>My roommate and I had some heated discussions at the beginning of the year about whether or not to lock our room when we went out. As someone from a major city, the idea of keeping my door unlocked 24/7 was sort of ridiculous to me, but she was from a really small town and felt completely safe doing so. She won eventually, mostly because I kept locking her out accidentally (and I’m still sort of annoyed by this - if you’re leaving for the night, why don’t you have your keys?). But nothing was ever stolen.</p>
<p>In terms of what materials students use to take notes in class, it’ll depend on the class. If your daughter likes using pen and paper, she certainly won’t be alone, and I can’t really think of a class in which that wouldn’t be acceptable. In larger lectures, you’ll often find students with laptops, some of whom are taking notes and some of whom aren’t. But some professors, as well as some departments, have strict no-laptop policies, and if she’s taking math, science, foreign language or studio art classes she won’t see a lot of laptop use in class.</p>
<p>Upstatemom, based on your post, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you and your daughter about the Smith Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (SSFFS, pronounced Sisyphus). If she’s looking for friends at Smith who share her interest in gaming, she’ll find them in large numbers at SSFFS. They’re pretty cool people and a tight-knit bunch, but they’re also easy to befriend. </p>
<p>Regarding theft, I actually have heard of things being stolen from rooms, though most people do, as teenage_cliche said, feel okay with leaving their doors unlocked. I personally locked my door whenever I left because I lived in houses where theft had been a problem, but those houses were definitely the exception rather than the norm. </p>
<p>Come to think of it, it’s too bad that they don’t make a lock for bathroom supplies like they do for laptops, because theft of toiletries seemed to be the most common occurrence. </p>
<p>Most people did tend to use pen and paper in my classes for taking notes, with the exception of my Reacting to the Past seminar, in which a laptop was a great asset for doing on-the-spot research to trounce one’s opponent in debate.</p>
<p>There is very little theft, and almost none from people’s rooms. When I was at Smith, it was common to leave the door to your room unlocked (I did this all the time, unless I was going to be away for a long period of time, like Christmas break, or I knew the house was going to have a party and there would be outside visitors about). One of the nice things about going to a place like Smith is the high-level of trust you can have with your housemates. So you can leave your bathroom stuff in your cubby in the bathroom, and you can leave your door unlocked and stuff won’t get molested. </p>
<p>The only real theft danger is in the library, when students leave their computers unattended for long periods of time to go get food or something. Even then, most of the time the computers are fine, but I have heard of people getting computers snatched occasionally if they’ve left them for a long time unattended in the open. The library is open to the public, so it’s good to be a little more cautious there. </p>
<p>I agree with others that in terms of what she takes to class, it depends on the class and on her prefernece. I took notes on my laptop in all my classes except my language classes and my really small seminars, but I was probably in the minority. If she prefers paper and she’s able to stay organized that way, it’s a perfectly acceptable option. It’s nice to have the laptop so that you can do work in the library without waiting for one of the computer terminals to open up (the terminals are very popular especially around mid terms and exams), but if she has a desktop that’s set up for her already, bringing that as well is not a bad option. She might see if her desktop monitor has a coax cable hook up, she could plug it into the in-dorm TV network and it will save her needing to buy a TV.</p>
<p>Another agreement on how low theft is at Smith. I got a flat tire once and had occasion to talk with a Public Safety officer. He said that Smith was about the easiest “police” duty imaginable. Bikes gone missing, usually when left unlocked & unattended in an “open” space, were about the biggest routine problem. Along with some funny reports of *******s that weren’t.</p>