<p>hello there! i'll be attending Dartmouth this fall, and I was assigned to Little in the Choates cluster, a single room. Why is there a bad reputation for the choates? I understand that the River is quite far from where everything else is, which is why everyone told me to avoid it. What's wrong with the Choates cluster?</p>
<p>my daughter lived in the river dorms (hinman) her freshman year and she had a great time. she was in a three room triple. i am sure you will love being in little. the people you live with are more important than where you live.</p>
<p>My daughter liked living in Choates (Brown) just fine. Made many friends. I personally thought Choates has a sort of blah, undistinguished look to it - not up to the architectural quality of much of the rest of the campus. But all worked out fine for her. The people matter a lot more than the buildings.</p>
<p>My D lived in the Choates and loved it. It’s a fun place and you’ll love it too!</p>
<p>S lived in the River for 2 years and liked it fine. Some of these distinctions are overblown.</p>
<p>single in choates is fine…but the doubles are all onerooms, which people dont like. They’re fine, just old…great location though</p>
<p>How is Judge?</p>
<p>Alright - when my friends and I (13’s) ranked the freshman clusters from best to worse we put them:</p>
<p>Russell Sage > McLaughlin > East Wheelock > Choates > River</p>
<p>This is purely in terms of age, location, and quality of rooms.</p>
<p>Russell Sage is considered to be one of the best because you can end up in Fahey/McClain, which is new, and has the best possible location for a freshman. Also, Butterfield is almost all singles, and Russell Sage is smack in between frat row, food, and class buildings.</p>
<p>McLaughlin is way the hell out there but it’s dorms are incredibly nice. Also, the entirety of the residents are freshman so there’s a very fun and outgoing atmosphere around the place. It’s not uncommon to see bbqs or pick-up frisbee games in the area between the dorms.</p>
<p>East Wheelock is similar to McLaughlin in that the dorms are new and the rooms are huge. It is about as far, maybe a little farther depending on what you do on campus, from the rest of the college as McLaughlin. It also houses upperclassmen and many of Dartmouth’s more introverted students, so it doesn’t have the same vibe as McLaughlin. Alot of people would hate to live in EW but the order of this list doesn’t take in to account dorm reputations.</p>
<p>The Choates is basically your average freshman cluster. It isn’t as far from the campus as EW or McLaughlin, but it’s buildings are old and considered to be an architectural disaster. The rooms are decent and similar to Russell Sage and the cluster is almost entirely freshman. But, I was never really able to observe the same sort of ‘chill’ atmosphere in the Choates that I found at McLaughlin.</p>
<p>Now, the River. Basically, any freshman that doesn’t live in the river thinks it’s the worst place to be on Earth. People that live in the River seem to love it - no one knows why. It is ridiculously far from food, classes, the gym, etc… The buildings are easily the worst of all the freshman dorms - especially in the winter due to the horrible heating situation. BUT, it’s like being part of the squad in Band of Brothers - you become really close to other people living in the River because you’ve both gone through hell together.</p>
<p>If you want info on a specific building, lmk.</p>
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<p>Fahey-McLane’s desirability may go down a bit this year because it is being converted to triples:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065380838-post178.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065380838-post178.html</a></p>
<p>Is Little still “substance-free” ? </p>
<p>Little is largely an anomaly within the Choates. It’s an unlikely coalition of religious conservatives (from all faiths), international students (mostly from Asia), people who checked “no preference” on the housing form but were placed there anyway, athletes (who may also fall under the religious conservative umbrella sometimes) and less social people (grossly stereotypical, but given past experience this happens to be the case). </p>
<p>Why they would place a substance-free dorm so close to Frat Row I’ll never understand.</p>
<p>The location is great and Choates as a whole is VERY social. (Given the fact that everyone is an eager freshman and Frat Row is so close.) It’s also pretty close to the library, should you need to go there. </p>
<p>River sucks. Isn’t it getting destroyed at some point? If you don’t live there you probably won’t ever need to go down there. (Unless it’s for French… Judge is usually the less social version of Little, although I think it’s been less “substance-free” over the years, if at all. Engineering students also might go since it’s so close.)</p>
<p>Hmm, my son was placed in Little (he specified substance-free as his own preference). He said he would find his own way once he got there. He is very sociable so he will probably break the mold.</p>