We took a tour of a dorm in the Freshamn 5 on accepted students day and was dissappointed with the cleanliness from the lounge to the hallways to the rooms. The hallways were dark with many lights off. The sink in the lounge was piled high with dirty dishes and had a bad odor. This left a very bad impression. I’d like to find out if this was a one off thing or are all the dorms like this.
Hi, current freshman here. I live in one of the freshman 5 and we don’t have these issues. Sometimes people will turn lights off in the hallways, but they all work. As long as students in the dorm are somewhat responsible, there should not be dirty dishes around. Additionally we have a wonderful maintenance person who works to keep our dorm clean. This obviously differs by dorm depending on who lives there, but hasn’t been a problem in my dorm or some of the others I’ve been in. Let me know if you have any more questions!
Thank you for your honest repsonse as a student. This will help in the decioson.
We also were pretty surprised at what we saw during admitted student day. We toured several dorms and saw the same issue with lights being out and the common kitchen areas being kind of dirty and run down, though I don’t recall piles of dirty dishes anywhere. It wasn’t a matter of just a single light being out but hallways being almost completely dark and it wasn’t because someone turned off the lights. I also thought it was odd that the rooms we were taken to hadn’t been picked up at all, didn’t have beds made, had clothes all over the place, and had students in them, all of which made them look smaller and more crowded than they might have been presented if cleaned up. I was more amused than anything (and somewhat surprised that admissions didn’t make sure things were prettied up on admitted student day) at the condition of the rooms as I’m sure that paints a better picture of what dorms actually are like than the model rooms we’ve seen at most other college visits. For what it is worth, our son thought everything looked fine and didn’t even seem to notice these things that kind of jumped out to us parents. I’d not worry about it and chalk up what you saw to a failure to sugarcoat things on admitted student day.
we looked at about 10 schools… rpi’s dorms were nicer than average and they were putting a new roof on one dorm and doing upkeep work on others when we visited…
the dorms looked clean over all, any messiness we saw came from the students.
at some schools we saw there was a problem with rodents / bugs and general lack of upkeep — Oberlin was the WORST, the dorm we saw smelled like rodent feces! I did not see any of this at rpi !
Oberlin actually expect the kids in some of the ‘specialty dorms’ to do all maintenance and cleaning! wow…
anyway… barton is super nice at rpi and the other one we saw was Hall hall… which was very nice… my daughter stayed overnight and was generally impressed with the dorms and the kids. she visited a senior who was in the quad and was blown away by how nice her room was … so there are nice rooms options available, especially for upper classman
I think the school tries to do it’s best to keep the grounds and dorms clean, updated, and healthy for the kids.
@themominator1234 I talked to My D at Oberlin about your assertion of rats and she says she’s never, ever heard anyone in any dorm say anything about rats let alone that anywhere smells like rodent feces. She laughed at your assertion and said it’s patently untrue.
Also, while it’s true that in some co-ops the students do most of the cleaning they don’t generally do the maintenance. Moreover, to get into a co-op one has to specifically request it. It is a lifestyle choice for those looking to be an active member of their housing community instead of just someone who consumes what others decide. Co-op members completely run their own dorm, including the finances and democratically control how things are done for the benefit of the entire co-op. Co-ops are not for everyone, but they are a fantastic learning experience for those who want to participate.
In fact, I’m not sure how you could see these voluntary co-ops as such a negative when they add so much richness to the experience of so many, Here’s some more information for those who want to know more about co-ops at Oberlin: http://osca.wilder.oberlin.edu/index.html
Co-ops are not uncommon. And I’ve never heard of them not being purely optional for people who want to be there. I lived in one my senior year of college (not at Oberlin) and enjoyed it. We didn’t do any budget/money stuff though. Just cooking and cleaning.
My son just graduated from RPI. He lived in one of the freshman 5 and it was fine. Then he moved to a dorm at the bottom of the “approach” (I think it’s called Blitman) which used to be a hotel. Each room had its own bathroom (cleaned by the school on regular basis), and many students wound up with single rooms, which were very large. It’s a little farther than some dorms, but my son was more than fine with it.
After that he moved to apartments, which made things cheaper overall. He could eat out (cheaply) almost all the time, and it was cheaper than the meal plan.
My S just moved into RPI dorms, and they looked fine to me.
In fact I would say he’s picky, and rejected another very good engineering school in part due to the
perception the dorms were older and dirtier than RPI dorms.
The freshman five aren’t the only options for living nor are they really all that bad in my opinion. As long as residents keep the common areas clean and their own rooms it’s pretty good. I’m not really sure why there would be dirty dishes though? There are no dishes usually in freshman residences. However, the Quad is very nice and, surprisingly, not isolated at all for freshman since now roughly half the area is just for freshman with the other half for sophomore and juniors. It’s clean, newly renovated, and they have AC. They also have access to Sage which is, objectively, way better than Commons (the other freshman residence hall). Blitman and Barh-H are also very nice but they are a bit far off, but they also have their own dining halls (still better food than commons), beautiful rooms, shuttles, and all the other stuff. Barton is also a really nice bet, but slightly more expensive. North Hall and E-Complex are also open to freshman and, honestly, are very very beautiful since they were just renovated. It’s like living in a hotel and they also have access to Sage. Don’t judge RPI based on the freshman five, that’s only one side of the story!
I have a friend whose son is at RPI. She said the dorms were horrible and nowhere near as nice as the average SUNY but it was where her son wanted to go. I have spoken to the young man and he really likes the school and feels he is getting an excellent education. The dorms aren’t great but they belong to the school he loves.
My son lives in Barton Hall (fresh dorm) and while his room is crowded (triple that I think should be a double) it is clean and nice. He is happy there. We visited Bing, Geneseo and I would say it depends which dorm you see, how well they compare. My observation is that RPI invests in their education and yes, SUNY invests more in dorms. You cant take the dorm with you when you graduate, and they are not that bad. Certainly not going to claim RPI has the best dorms, but not bad. He does say the food is not good, but then again have another at Cornell which has top ranked food, and it’s not that good at Cornell either.