Co-ed vs Single Sex Housing

Student Lounge College Life
1

I’m deciding on where to live at my college next school year, and I don’t know what to choose. I want to choose co-ed, just because I’m curious how it is, but I’m also hesitant, because I have severe anxiety, and am used to having more girl friends than guy friends, if you get what I mean. I’m most comfortable with girls, but I wouldn’t mind taking the chance to experience living with the opposite gender, but I want to weigh in all the pros and cons first to make sure I’ll get at least a good or decent experience from it, you know. I’m a girl, if anyone was wondering, by the way.

  1. My question is, people who choose to live in co-ed housing, are people usually loud most of the time? I usually get headaches pretty fast, because I’m used to living in a quiet environment, and I concentrate on my school work better if it’s quiet. I got lucky this year as a freshmen, where my entire dorm building was quiet almost all the time, though lol If anyone has experience in co-ed, that would be really helpful.

  2. How is the bathroom situation in co-ed housing?
    At my college, and the places (we call them “villages”) I’m choosing to live in, have apartment/suit style dorm rooms and buildings, so my experience might be different than someone else’s, where instead of a whole floor sharing a bathroom, it’s just 1 other person, but what was your experience?

  3. Any other pros and cons I should weigh in about choosing preference over either single sex or co-ed housing?

Thanks for reading.

2
  1. Men tend to be rowdier than women, so the rowdiness factor is usually all-male > coed > all-women.
  2. Looks like your floor plan has single user bathrooms rather than gang bathrooms, so there should not be arguments about whether gang bathrooms are single gender or coed. It is also fairly common, but not universal, for suite dorms to have single gender suites, but suites with students of both genders in the same building / floor. But the latter is school-specific, so check with your school.
3

Although it has been a while, I lived in both types of housing in college. Honestly, the women’s dorms were much quieter and more civilized. The coed dorms (esp with a lot of freshman) were really noisy, especially at night on weekends.

In both situations we had bathrooms down the hall. That wasn’t really an issue.

4

D was in a substance-free dorm (her choice) on the only all-girls floor (not her choice) last year. In addition to it being quieter and cleaner, there was surprisingly little drama on her floor. One large communal bathroom per floor. One girl’s parents wanted her to only use that all-girls bathroom, but she gave that up early in the year when she got tired of waiting and just used a co-ed bathroom on the floor above or below if hers got too busy.

Using a co-ed bathroom may take some getting used to, but I don’t think it takes long. In a shared bathroom, doors for showers and toilets lock and are typically very private. I experienced this when I went to the parent orientation at D’s school - moms and dads using the same floor bathroom.

5

I live in a co-ed dorm at the moment and it gets decently loud. The guys can get pretty rowdy, but so can the girls. I think they hype each other up. I also prefer quiet, and actually requested an early quiet hours floor, but was placed on a regular one. As a result, I use earplugs all the time to study and to sleep. However, it is nice to have the opportunity to make more friends with guys, as I too often find myself with all female friends.

My bathroom situation is not co-ed, as I live in a room that shares a bathroom with the adjoining room, which is full of girls. Sounds like you’ll be dealing with a more relaxed situation than a communal bathroom, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that.