<p>As a prospective student for the University of Chicago, I've recently begun to look into the house system. I'm very interested in Burton-Judson: it's a beautiful building with a great house culture. The dorm, from what I've heard, also doesn't party much, despite having a healthy social atmosphere. Anyway, it appears BJ can often be quite insular, and students have to go out of their way to make friends in other dorms. My question: how widespread is it for BJ students go to parties in other dorms? On a related note, how often do BJ parties happen?</p>
<p>YES. A prospie after my heart! I dormed in BJ once upon a time.</p>
<p>People who live in BJ can party – a lot-- just what they tend to share in common is their dislike of partying where they live. So I lived among a lot of fratty bro types and a lot of “social” people, they just did their socializing elsewhere.</p>
<p>Whether your house parties as a house or not depends largely on the people who have the biggest rooms, and whether they hold parties or not. My third year of college I had a dorm room that was bigger than my room and my brother’s bedroom combined-- so yes, I could have a lot of people over.</p>
<p>Also keep in mind that your house is the people you eat with and you see all the time. There are about 49 other human beings there. After like two weeks you’re not going to want to party with them all the time either. So you’ll start going to frat parties, dinner parties, apartment parties, etc. and I realize that at the moment going to a party at a college student’s off campus apartment sounds intimidating, but I’ll let another student back me up on the kind of open-ended party culture, parties are <em>not</em> hard to find, particularly not when I still got facebook party invitations for about three years after I graduated, it’s not particularly selective either.</p>
<p>That said, I think BJ is a great dorm if you know you want a single, want to live in a well-maintained castle, and like living next to a dining hall.</p>
<p>@unalove or anyone living in BJ :)</p>
<p>Hello, I’m an admitted student and I have a specific question about BJ that hopefully you can help me with. I’m a little concerned with the co-ed communal bathrooms because I come from a girls’ high school and have never really shared a bathroom with the opposite sex before. Specifically, I want to know for the showers, are they like inside stalls with locked door or is there only a curtain? Also, is the bathroom divided into a girls’ side and a boys’ side?</p>
<p>@babykangaroo - can’t give you specifics… all I can tell you is that after doing an overnight back in January and getting tours of several dorms, BJ was clearly my D’s favorite and she put it as her #1 on her housing application. She was also worried about the co-ed thing until she talked to some of the girls at BJ who said it’s not a big deal.</p>
<p>In any of your guys’ experience, is a single room detrimental to one’s social experience? If I were to get a single in BJ, would it be harder to make friends than if I had a double in, say, south?</p>