Are single rooms for upperclassmen readily available or uncommon these days at LACs?
We went on a tour of the College of Wooster and the student guide said that singles were limited and that many students lived in doubles all four years.
We are mainly looking at schools in the 25-75 range of the US News Liberal Arts Colleges list.
Thanks.
My D attended Wellesley and had singles her junior and senior years.
My S attended Bowdoin and never had a single.
Not sure if Wesleyan at #18 is outside your cutoff, but, after sophomore year single rooms are pretty common. That’s because Wes keeps its own stable of furnished woodframe houses expressly for upper classmen.
Depends on the college.
At Williams, singles are more common than doubles, even as a freshman. Granted, the single rooms for freshmen are small! 40% of freshmen will have doubles (albeit with a private common room separate from the bedroom), and sophomores with lower lottery picks will have doubles (and, with a really bad number in the lottery, the double may be small). Juniors and seniors can count on singles, unless, for some reason, they want a double and select it.
I am trying to remember from my tours about colleges in the US News range you named— I am not sure, but I think I recall Connecticut College and Skidmore having nice housing with singles by the time you become a senior??? I do remember that Skidmore has nice on-campus apartment living that the seniors like. EDIT: Yes, I just checked their websites. Both Conn and Skidmore have singles.
Thanks. Any info on these schools: Dickinson, Denison, St Olaf, Trinity College, Beloit, Univ of Rochester, Rhodes, Occidental
You need to know more than just whether or not singles exist. You also need to know the system for allocating rooms. Most schools have some sort of lottery/room draw system. So even if the dorms have singles, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you can count on getting one.
At Denison, seniors generally are in 3-4 person senior apartments which have single occupancy bedrooms, or are able to get single rooms in regular dorms. Not a guarantee that every senior will have there own room, but is pretty common. Tough for juniors to get singles in the dorms, though depending on housing time slot, some may get lucky.
We visited Dickinson which has theme/senior houses owned by the college near the Athletic Center. I don’t know if those are generally single bedrooms or not though.
Yes, I understand that lottery/room draw has an impact. I was just surprised at Wooster to hear that is was common, according to our junior year guide, for students to live in doubles all four years. There are singles listed on the Wooster residential life page but they must be rather limited. I am just trying to learn about possible housing scenarios at some of the colleges on my kid’s list. I was going into this, based on my pre-historic personal experience, thinking that juniors and seniors usually lived in singles.
At Colgate, most freshman get doubles though a decent amount get singles, some get suites.
The following years, students usually get the dorm/hall that they want.
At Vassar there are many freshman singles.
@blue1516 While singles are not guaranteed for upperclassmen at Rochester, MOST of the students I know there have that option if they want it. (Upperclassmen often live on campus all four years there.) My daughter is a senior living in a two-bedroom/two-bathroom campus apartment with one roommate. She had a double as a sophomore but a single in a suite last year. So pretty typical.
My daughter is a sophomore at a LAC (Colorado College) and ALL of her sophomore friends have singles.
At some schools, a quad may actually be 4 singles attached to a common room. But because it takes a group of 4 to enter the lottery for it, it isn’t describe/classified as a single.
You may be able to find room plans on the school’s website. You can also often read how the housing lottery works. Most upperclassmen at most LACS I know have had singles as upperclassmen and quite as few as sophomores. Rarer for freshmen but definitely possible at schools like Haverford.