<p>It’s pretty hard to generalize the dorms here as a whole. I’ve heard of occasional bug sightings in some places (Forbes addition, Wilson, the junior “slums”), but nothing terrible. Building services does exterminations on requests if things get bad. Haven’t seen any peeling walls, and I don’t know of any rooms with carpet. Some of the bathrooms in the older unrenovated dorms look kinda grungy, but that’s about it. I haven’t been to Harvard, so I don’t know what makes Princeton dorms better than Harvard dorms other than the people who live in them.</p>
<p>Princeton’s res college system is like Harvard’s house system in reverse. At Princeton, you live in one of six colleges for your first two years, and then you have all of upperclass housing to choose from for the next two. At Harvard, all freshmen live in the Yard, and people create blocking groups that are split into Harvard’s (twelve?) houses, where you live for the next three.</p>
<p>There are 12 Houses at Harvard. Here are some of the reviews from the Crimson this year. According to Harvard’s newspaper, many Houses are horrendous. </p>
<p>Random Question: How can you have “nice housing” with “cockroaches and mice”?</p>
<p>Lowell: Lowell is simultaneously praised for its convenient location and berated for its lackluster housing options. Sophomore suites are notoriously tiny, and although the options do get better later on, the insect infestation, stench of sewage and leaky roof tend can make rooms unappealing. One resident tried to be optimistic about the house’s cockroach infestation, writing that the critters appear “only at the beginning of the year, though—then they’re gone.” Nice try, but Lowell definitely has room for improvement when it comes to housing.
[Lowell</a> House | Flyby | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/series/the-housing-market-2012/article/2012/3/5/lowell-rating-5-overall/]Lowell”>http://www.thecrimson.com/series/the-housing-market-2012/article/2012/3/5/lowell-rating-5-overall/)</p>
<p>Or transfer into Mather House, the moderne concrete river House which guarantees “singles for life”. The singles in the high-rise are quite spacious, the views of the Charles River and downtown Boston are fabulous, and insects cannot burrow through concrete.</p>
<p>It’s all relative; Harvard’s dorms aren’t fantastic compared to Princeton’s, maybe, but on the grand scheme of things they’re very nice. Having spent a lot of high school summers at state schools, UChicago, and Brown, our dorms are ten times nicer than any of those. (Underclassman housing vs. underclassman housing; haven’t lived in senior housing here yet, and summer students didn’t get the best rooms.)</p>
<p>Princeton’s dorms are…fine? I mean, I think they’re nice enough for college dorms. I like my room just fine. No bug problems here. I think that relative to other schools I’ve seen, Princeton probably falls on the nicer side, but they’re still dorms.</p>