Dorm situation

Does anyone know if we have any say in what specific dorm we get as freshman and also if the dorms are always linked to the same social house year after year?

Hey @socalcyclist. You don’t have any say in what *first-year dorm you get placed in but they are all pretty much the same (with the exception that West and Osher Halls are all doubles, while the other six are mostly quads). They are all very nice with separate common and sleeping rooms. Each floor of a given dorm is associated with a different *college house. However, as a sophomore you can apply to live in any of the eight (soon to be nine) college houses. The house system isn’t nearly as strong as at schools like Yale because there just aren’t enough students for them to form insular communities. * are just Bowdoin lingo that you might as well get used to if you are planning on coming!

Let me know if you have any other questions about the Bowdoin housing sitch!

@willdbk when you say quads and doubles, it means that two people share the same bedroom right? with a common room in between for the quads? or are they singles connected by the common room?

A quad is two doubles connected by a common room and a double is a common room and 1 double attached.

No say in Freshman dorm placement. No say in which Social House you are affiliated with but the latter is virtually meaningless because you can participate in events at any social house and even end up living in a different social house if you apply. Social house affiliation only matters for the first week or so of school…

There are no Freshman singles and there are few enough overall that it’s hard to get them even later years. The lottery system is designed to discourage you from applying to them too. They do the lottery in tiers so that the most coveted room types are done last and it’s a crap shoot because if you don’t get a good number you could have missed the chance to be in a quad or triple with friends and end up randomly assigned. All Bowdoin dorms, including Freshman, have a “common room” (not the type a floor shares but specific to the room suite), whether it is a double, triply, quad or quint. So a double is two rooms – one with two beds and one with the desks and couch, etc. A quad is three rooms with 2 beds in each bedroom plus the common room, etc. Note some Freshman end up in quints which are suites designed for 4 people but where they put a third bed in one of the rooms and a 5th desk in the common room. Some quints are bigger rooms but many are not.

Where is the bathroom?

@bigfandave There are gender-specific (I wonder how long that lasts?) common bathrooms on each floor (they are not private to the suites), plus multiple private shower rooms. Depending on the dorm, there’s not a lot of suites per floor so you’re not sharing with that many people (certainly compared to my UCLA experience). My son’s freshman dorm had 4 suites per floor, for example – two quads and 2 lager quints, so there were 9 boys and 9 girls on the floor.

This is all Freshman housing we’re talking about. By sophomore year he was living in a converted apartment complex run by Bowdoin (they have many) that included it’s own bathroom, living room, kitchen, breakfast nook and two bedrooms, for 3 people.

Thank you.