<p>My "DD" and I recently visited a notable NE college. Everything looked great until we got to the dorms. We were shown a "quad". Two sets of bunk beds, industrial style tile flooring, cinder block walls, and frail looking, unfinished, pine furniture. The room was about 12x12. It reminded my "DD" of every prison cell she has seen depicted on the History Channel's series about US prisons. The doubles room we were shown was equally depressing. This college approaches 40k per year. This was our first college visit. Is this the best we can hope for or have you folks out there found a stark difference in dorm appearence from one place to another. Obviously the dorm won't weigh especially heavy in our decision but, if any of you were pleased with the dorm appearence at a particular NE/NY/NJ college please advise. Keep hope alive...</p>
<p>My daughter loved her first year dorm at Columbia and I thought that it was a slum. My niece's living arrangements at Emory were The Ritz by comparison.</p>
<p>My D's second and third year living arrangements were tiny but well designed....at least they looked as if they had been cleaned this century. Once again, she thought that they were fab. I suspect that suburban or rural schools without as many space considerations do better in the dorm department. </p>
<p>I am amazed at how these kids can take a dump and turn it into something interesting. Don't be too taken aback by the dorms.</p>
<p>Dorms were a consideration for D in making her decision. She checked the Princeton Review and they rank the rooms. Her dorm room at Amherst was wonderful! They have remodelled the freshman dorms (and boy, are a lot of them just gorgeous!) and are remodelling more buildings even now (made a huge committment to refurbishing all the buildings on campus). D's room was large and clean (plaster walls and large windows). The furniture is pretty nondescript everywhere, I think. (but the room was large enough not to bunk the beds, and they still could have a large group of kids in the room). Next year, D will be in theme house, same type of furniture, but hardwood floors, fireplace and lots of windows in her room. And this is a single! She will have room for a futon without having to loft the bed. We even read about some colleges having marble showers (in the Princeton Review). On our visits the rooms we were able to see (in many of our tours, we weren't allowed into the dorms) ran the gamut. One prestigious school used so much battleship grey that we were depressed just looking at the dorms, and the buildings were in tremendous disrepair! We saw a good bit of cinderblock, but one had nice porches overlooking a park-like area, and the rooms even had TVs and wonderful built-ins! (Trinity SA)</p>
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I am amazed at how these kids can take a dump and turn it into something interesting. Don't be too taken aback by the dorms.
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<p>And I am amazed at how kids can take something interesting and turn it into a dump.</p>
<p>S1 had to bunk his first year in a room that was designed for 1 1/2.<br>
S2 had to bunk in a room meant for one. It does not seem to have bothered him unduly, though at the end of the first semester he moved his bed into the lounge of his suite. Next year's accommodations will be slightly larger though by no means palatial.</p>
<p>S2 has stayed at a variety of dorms for summer camp. The COA at these various colleges had no bearing on the size and quality of the dorm rooms. At one camp, located on a very expensive college campus, the knob of the drawer fell off as we tried to open the drawer to put his clothes away, and the furniture was best described as "rickety." At another camp located at a uni that was equally expensive though a bit less prestigious, the double room actually looked like a double room and the furniture, though merely utilitarian, did not fall apart.</p>
<p>I've seen a lot of dorms over the past few years, and remember a lot from my college days, too.</p>
<p>For the "standard" price, what you can expect to find everywhere is:</p>
<p>Cinder block walls, painted, at least. (Why? low cost, low maintenance, very durable, no drywall holes, ** fireproof ** and sound proofing.</p>
<p>Tile floors - easy cleanup, and beer proof</p>
<p>10x10 to 12x12 for a double, unless it is a suite setup with a separate seating/work area, when the sleeping area may be more crowded.</p>
<p>many will not be AC</p>
<p>old dorms, pre-war, the ones with character, will often have community bathrooms.</p>
<p>These rooms often look worn because they are. How careful do you think the kids are?</p>
<p>They are often small and crowded because the college wants to get the kids out of the rooms into common areas for studying, socializing and so forth. They especially don't want cooking in the rooms for obvious safety reasons.</p>
<p>Now some colleges have deluxe options, at a higher price. BU is an example. There, you can have a palace (OK, a penthouse) overlooking the Charles river with everything one could want. At a price.</p>
<p>Personally, I think the food quality and selection is every bit as important as the dorm room. Even within the dorm, what matters more is the dorm atmosphere, but that's hard to check in advance.</p>
<p>My thinking is these so called freshman "quads" (4 per room) may have been created as a stop gap measure due to over crowding. Our tour guide put a happy face on quad rooms indicating that "quads" were often requested by students so that they might use mutiple roomates to meet varying groups of people. In other words as a rapid segway into the college's social scene. Not sure I buy it. Are quad rooms common for freshman? Again, this was not a suite stlye set up... this is a12x12 unpartitioned room with a bathroom 40 feet down the hall.</p>
<p>DS's dorm at an expensive (more than $40K per year)NE university had small rooms with not much space. Nevertheless, he found the living arrangements fine. He said the people made all the difference, not the size or configuration of the room. As he put it, if he had been considering freshman housing as a criteria when considering colleges, he would have stayed home (private large room with private bath and lots of storage at HOME). Living in the dorm was....living in the dorm. And at most universities, the freshman housing is not palatial, but the upperclass housing is typically a LOT better (suites, apartments). DD looked at the dorms, but again, for her they were not a top consideration. It's a dorm....not an apartment or a hotel. Both kids looked at both on and off campus housing options for upperclassmen...that WAS important to them.</p>
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And I am amazed at how kids can take something interesting and turn it into a dump.
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<p>Maybe arranging the room in an interesting way is a girl thing....the majority of the time she was probably dressing herself with clothing picked up off of the floor so I don't think that girls have a lock on neatness. ;)</p>
<p>The question of dorms is funny. What makes a nice dorm room can be so different for everyone. Many of the schools that claim to have "dorms like palaces" held no charm for me. I also don't like the dorms that are like condos. It all feels so sterile. I personally like historic buildings, old houses, antiques, etc. Dorm rooms were important in my choice also and part of the reason that I loved Bennington. I really like living in an old house with hardwood floors and big windows, though I know that this is not for everyone. We also have new dorms on campus and many people love those.</p>
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This was our first college visit.
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<p>Yeah, dorms are gross. So what else is new? Soon you won't even bother looking at them on your tours.</p>
<p>Amazingly, most kids really don't care. As long as their friends are around them they're happy. Now bad roommates - that's a different story...</p>
<p>I agree as with newmassdad as to the importance of food quality. Fortunately or not however, my kid's are happy, to a nauseating extent I might add, with hot-pockets, pizza, and subs. I don't see the food as a stumbling block although we would go back and sample some if this place winds up on the short list. The two dinning areas I veiwed were terrific. Sun bathed cushioned booths, salad and juice bars, recessed lighting, aptly arranged plant life .. really, the place was amazing as compared to your average high school dinning "venue". Same with the library, the chapel, the rec center. It just seemed like dorms and only the dorms, were frozen in time circa 1968.</p>
<p>Maybe it's a generational thing. I think a lot of us baby-boomers may have grown up in the smaller cape and ranch style homes erected by the millions in the post WWII building boom. Many of us shared a room with siblings before going off to college. Now however, larger homes afford many children thier own BR, often with private amenities ie., TV, computer, stereo. It must be an incredibly difficult transition for some to share living quarters with complete strangers with whom your only common interest may prove to be the college you elected to attend. Don't get me wrong my kids are not shrinking violets, but still there's an adjustment to be made and the strark surroundings probably make it all the more difficult.</p>
<p>The comment about the dorms being built before the war having community baths made me chuckle...which war? Persian Gulf?? My son's dorm (at Boston University, BTW) was built in the early 1970's (as were many of the large dorms on the BU campus). They all have community bathrooms. And that gorgeous (and it IS gorgeous) housing overlooking the Charles River is $10,000 per year (no that does not include board...these are apartments) and is for juniors and seniors only. There are also some really nice Brownstones on the BU campus...Bay State Road...and those are nice but usually for sophomores or older. Most freshmen live in the larger dorm dorms...yes the ones with the tiny rooms, community bathrooms, etc. Oh...those are about $10,000 per year also, but that includes the food (which DS thought was pretty good).</p>
<p>Come to England where all college rooms are singles. The thought of sharing such a small space fill UK students with horror!</p>
<p>Nightingale:
I too worried about my kids adjusting to sharing living quarters. It is indeed a new experience to many kids. But you will be surprised at how easily kids adjust! They really don't seem to mind at all - in fact they have a great time, assuming their rommates are OK. Kids tend to make friends with a wide range of kids in their dorms - not just their roommates. (Often they don't even particularly hang with their roommate and it doesn't matter at all.) </p>
<p>Take my word for it - in no time flat they feel very at home in their dorms (even the crappy ones) and will be wandering the halls in their pj bottoms and t-shirts looking annoyed at any interlopers like parents on parent weekend or tour groups. ;)</p>
<p>N-gale, were you on our tour?? LOL We were in middle NY, LAC-looking. We were shown a quad with br, living room and bath. I said to wife, "wow, this is 4 people stuffed into a 1 br apartment!" It's more fun to visit dorms when colleges are in session; tourguide knocks on door and 5 hs students and 10 parents wander through the wreckage of an occupied dorm room with sleepy students peering out at you from under their covers.... at 2 pm! </p>
<p>My worst dorm tour was at unnamed U. Large tour group taken through an all women's floor permeated with the distinct aroma of vomit.</p>
<p>When seeing the cinder block walls of the 9 story dorm my D was in for the first year at UCSD, she may have seen 'prison walls' but I saw fireproof, soundproof, and low maintenance. She was only in that dorm for the first year before moving into on-campus apartments where almost all second years live. This was much nicer as it had a living room and small kitchen plus she got her own room. After the second year, she moved off-campus into a very nice apartment complex a mile or two from campus. Given the temporary nature of the stay, it's not really that big of a deal.</p>
<p>cupcake: When my D did a study-abroad and stayed at the dorms at Cambridge and at U of Glasgow, she raved over the rooms. You guys are lucky.</p>
<p>Haven't had a chance to read the whole thread, so hope I'm not repeating. But dorm "quality" can vary greatly within the same school. S attended Bates and Tulane this year. Neither room anything to write home about - Bates was a single, but the usual tile floor, etc. It was in an old builidng on the "quad" that used to be classrooms a million years ago, so had a bit of architectural interest.</p>
<p>At Tulane, he chose the Honors dorm, where he had overnighted. I can only describe it as scuzzy. Industrial carpeting had long ago lost its lustre. Common baths - ugh. But that didn't bother him one whit; he had other priorities (and he belongs to the same cult that marite describes as being able to turn someplace nice into a dump with minimal apparent effort).</p>
<p>*getting to my point here ;) * Yet, at Tulane, the newest dorm (Wall Residential College) truly would top the charts, imo, for "Dorms Are Like Palaces" in Princeton Review. Spacious rooms with large windows; new, cool furniture that could from an HGTV special on clever multi-use storage pieces, etc. The freshman double I saw shared a cool bath with one other double.
I would have opted for this dorm in a heart beat.</p>
<p>So...<br>
(1)don't assume that what you see in one dorm room on a tour covers the bases (it's supposed to be "typical" but how can they do that if they're not all the same age/style...?).
(2)don't assume your child cares as much as you do
(3)do realize that you can make up for that institutional feel with what you put in there and how you live
(4)an awfully lot of schools have HRL web pages which show photos of "real live, as lived in" dorm rooms for every single building; have floor plans and dimensions; lists of furnishings etc. This would give you a much truer picture.
(5)for the most part, I found dorm rooms to be "seen one, seen 'em all." S, in fact, didn't even bother to look at them on tours after he'd seen 2 or 3, and realized that, for his purposes, this was the case.</p>
<p>I know some kids will care a lot (I know I would today; never even looked at a dorm room before choosing the school in my day). Those kids will have to dig deep into dorm options/likelihoods the way others dig into professor research interests....</p>
<p>Re: Dorm rooms...more important than size....look for safety. Look for easy egress in the event of an emergency. Look for both sprinklers and fire/smoke detectors in the rooms AND in the hallways. Surprisingly, we saw dorm rooms that did not have these in the rooms...oh and it was a high rise to boot. After the Seton Hall fire, one would think that every dorm in the country would have been retrofitted with sprinkler systems and smoke/fire detectors. In our family, those features were much more important (to the parents) than the size, number of people, age, or condition of the dorm room....none of which mattered at ALL to the college students.</p>
<p>Why are people so afraid to name the school involved. CC is fairly anonymous. No one will sue you or anything!</p>
<p>Yes, dorms can smell. Back in the day, the carpets in my dorm at the U of Detroit smelled moldy from the water balloon fights that the guys had at night. (Freshmen and Sophomores can be so immature) They also liked to play hockey in the hallway. It wasn't fun getting hit by a flying puck as you walk out of your room. I must confess that it WAS fun getting drunk and playing football in the snow at 2 am.</p>
<p>You learn to avoid the community restroom during certain times of the day, especially the hour or so after dinner. That mystery meat drenched in secret sauce was not a fun experience.</p>
<p>I learned to shower, etc., whenever possible, right after housekeeping cleaned the restroom, or to truck up to the top floor where the upperclassmen and graduate students stayed. Their hygiene habits seemed to be much cleaner.</p>