<p>I'm a high school senior exploring my college options. I was just about sold on IU when I decided to look into the dorm situation on their website.<br>
The big question: Are they really that bad?<br>
The other questions: Are there any private rooms? Which neighborhood would you say is best (obviously not NE!)? Which hall has the Visual Arts community?
I'd appreciate any info IU students could give me.</p>
<p>Dorms are not THAT bad; I’ve visited many of my friends at UC schools in California and was shocked to find most of them lived in smaller rooms than the ones at IU. </p>
<p>A lot of dorms have singles (Wright, Teter, and Read come to mind), and Ashton is all single rooms. </p>
<p>The neighborhood that is best is all a matter of personal preference… they’re all pretty much the same (a huge percentage of freshman all concentrated within one area), but are generally classified by how much they party/how crazy it gets on weekends.</p>
<p>The dorms are not bad at all. Foster, McNutt, Read, Ashton and Eigenmann are actually “nice.” Teter and Forest are pretty typical and Wright/Briscoe are the oldest and least-nice but certainly not unbearable.</p>
<p>I lived in Wright last year and it was completely manageable with the exception of the showers; they were quite literally NEVER warm enough and they randomly spazzed out and got hot and/or just turned off for no reason. By the end of Spring semester, only two of the six showers in our bathroom worked; and the maintenance staff at Wright is extremely lazy and these types of things never get fixed unless you obsessively call down to the front desk or literally walk down there in a group and complain until they take action. Also, Wright is divided into “houses” (essentially seperate floors all on the same floor) and you have to share a bathroom with 2 or 2 1/2 other houses rather than just a single floor so they are pretty gross all the time. Wright also had a fair number of singles. Additionally, the lack of AC is just something you adjust to with time (It’s only an issue in august/september/first half of october and the end of april and may) and it’s not bad. </p>
<p>If you’re in any doubt about what neighborhood you want, I think Central is best. It’s close to more stuff and not a crazy party atmosphere but still very social. If you like being more social and like going out a lot and don’t mind people partying in the dorms wednesday-saturday nights, live in Northwest and if you’re more quiet and want a more reserved living place, live in Southeast.</p>
<p>Last year, the Visial Arts LLC was in Wright, in the Harney House on floors 2 and 3. I was a member of it mysef. I don’t think the location is changing. This is the Central neighborhood; but know that most LLC’s (with the exception of the Kelley LLC) are pretty quiet and low on partying. My floor last year was almost entirely Asian and doors were closed all the time and little or no partying happened most weekends. The next hallway over was a different story however.</p>
<p>You can PM me if you have more questions about the dorms.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info.</p>
<p>Northwest dorms (Foster, Briscoe, and McNutt) are known as the party dorms and are the most commonly requested ones by freshmen, so if you want to stay away just put it as your 3rd choice neighborhood when filling out the housing app.</p>
<p>What is the deal with the bathrooms? I know some colleges have one bathroom per suite and some just have a huge bathroom on each floor. I might actually prefer the latter so I don’t have to clean it. :)</p>
<p>You won’t have to clean the bathrooms unless you’re living on a co-op floor (in which you pay a reduced housing fee in exchange for doing some minor housekeeping). All the dorms have a cleaning staff. </p>
<p>From my experience just about each floor had 1-2 bathrooms- small floors like mine only had 1 bathroom (there were about 18 people on our floor), while bigger floors with 30-40ish people had 2 bathrooms. </p>
<p>Teter is cool because it has private bathrooms and showers and there were about 3-5 of those per floor (not completely sure on the numbers) but it was a LOT more private as opposed to sharing bathrooms with everyone else. I think another dorm might be installing bathrooms like this (Briscoe maybe?) but I’m not certain.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if I can switch from a double to a single? I applied for a single as my second choice and didn’t get it but I heard at the Orientation that the single that I wanted in Ashton still has open rooms.</p>