<p>i have another question for current Grinnellians (or the parents thereof)...</p>
<p>i would just like to some things about the dorms: dorm options, which ones are the coolest/which to try to stay away from, are they big/small, nice/run down, what dorms freshman usually end up with, have your roommates been cool, problems/perks of specific dorms (like close to classes, food, having to cross train tracks, etc)...</p>
<p>pretty much anything about your experiences and thoughts!
Thank you!</p>
<p>bumpety bump bump...</p>
<p>I went there for the summer so I know a bit about it.</p>
<p>The dorms are broken off into campuses. There's North Campus which looks like and old castle-y type thing, but not run down. It's on the other side of a large soccer field which is nice. The only dorm I know from North is Noyce, which is the one that my friends stay in. Apparently it's known as the "party dorm," but I didn't notice any during my stay. The new PEC (physical education...something) is apart of North Campus.</p>
<p>Over the summer I stayed on East campus which is the newer buildings. It's quite a walk from north campus but it /looks/ really nice. Air-conditioned, nice walls, a small basketball court at the end. According to on of the articles from Ins and Outs, East Campus is where the 'preps' like to go, but I'm sure that's not always true, just a stereotype. From my personal experience at the two dorms, the ones on East Campus were bigger. They were also more well-lit, but it was ALWAYS COLD because I didn't want to make my roommate turn down the AC.</p>
<p>A friend stayed on South Campus, and apparently (according to Ins and Outs again) lots of hippies and stuff stay around there. And don't wear shoes. Admittedly, they didn't seem to wear a lot clothes, but it's nothing. Now, South Campus has a cafeteria which reminds me of the Great Hall from Harry Potter, but it won't be there by the time the class of 2010 gets there because they're building a new facilty. Anyway, South from the outside and inside looks a bit like North, old-y but not run down. South Campus is the shortest walk to Burling, the Library, and the Science Building, Noyce. </p>
<p>and the Campus is set up like this:</p>
<p>EAST SOUTH</p>
<p>NORTH</p>
<p>Well...I tried. Okay, so I think I preferred East because it was well lit. But I was also in a second floor room that had really high ceilings and lots of lights. There are lounges and kitchens in all dorms, and bathrooms of course. The people in the dorms decide which bathrooms are going to be male/female etc. The only thing is that East is literally in the corner of the campus and is hella far to walk to all classes, while North is close to some of the language classes and stuff, East is only really close to the PEC.</p>
<p>Oh! ANd I found the article.</p>
<p>Read From the East Side to the South Side. I hope that helps. It's written by a current Grinnell Student.</p>
<p>For next year, East is definitely where it's at as it has the best facilities and will be close to the new Noyce student center. The downside is that it is far from the academic buildings.</p>
<p>so exeuntsl, are you planning to stay at grinnell? you sounded pretty unhappy in some of your other posts. if you think you'll get a better education at a large university....... think again. perhaps you should stick it out at grinnell and then go on to a graduate program in a sunny warm location.</p>
<p>I don't think I'll get a better education at a larger university--far from it. State schools have much lower standards, but since I'm a self-learner, I think I will take only a slight hit to my education. I'm leaving Grinnell because of its grasping, greedy little financial aid policy, which seems more interested in sucking the essence out of my scholarships than trying to help me at all. I had to stay over winter break because I couldn't afford the ticket back, and I'm tapped out of money after spending a grant total of around $100 for textbooks. Arnold Woods hasn't been helpful at all; in fact, in an email to me he was condescending and slightly threatening. So, in short, Grinnell's financial aid can die, and I'm sick of subsidizing their disgusting merit aid program and their construction with my scholarship and federal aid money. (I will, however, still reserve a spot for next year to cover all my bases.)</p>
<p>EDIT: I forgot to add a correction: the new student center is called the Joe Rosenfeld Center, not the Noyce center. Noyce is the science buidling.</p>
<p>Grinnell is quite the expensive. My girlfriend spent the beginning of semester complaining about spending 400 dollars on books that she's never going to read again (art history books and stuff like that). </p>
<p>But hey, they must be pretty good at whatever they're doing to get money, they have the largest endowment behind HYP! I'm just sayin'.</p>
<p>Grinnell's endowment is far behind HYP in both absolute and per capita terms. Harvard: 25.47 billion dollars; Yale: 15.22 billion dollars; Princeton: 11.21 billion dollars.</p>
<p>Grinnell: 1.39 billion dollars.</p>
<p>In per capita terms, Grinnell does better, but is still no more than fifth place.</p>
<p>Grinnell's endowment growth is largely due to an exceptional rate of endowment growth in the past few decades. Also, the school is cheap with financial aid. The top LACs spend more on financial aid even when controlling for their wealthier populations and higher comprehensive fees--this is evidenced by the lower cumulative debt loads their students graduate with.</p>
<p>Well it would have to be per capita, because those schools cater to like 10x as many students per year. And also, there is no real competion as far as money goes with those schools, but Grinnell is a small LAC in the middle of Iowa, so being up that high in ranks is impressive, I don't care how far behind they are.</p>
<p>word. #36 not too shabby.
College and University Endowments, 2004
Rank Institution Endowment1<br>
1. Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.) $22,587,305,000
2. Yale University (New Haven, Conn.) 12,740,896,000
3. Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.) 9,928,200,000
4. Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford, Calif.) 9,922,041,000<br>
5. Univ. of Texas System Administration (Austin, Tex.) 9,360,113,745<br>
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.) 5,869,800,000
7. Columbia University (New York, N.Y.) 4,493,085,000<br>
8. Univ. of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.) 4,243,352,775
9. Emory University (Atlanta, Ga.) 4,086,000,000
10. Washington University (St. Louis, Mo.) 4,083,958,000
11. Univ. of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pa.) 4,019,000,000<br>
12. Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) 3,884,629,679<br>
13. Univ. of Chicago (Chicago, Ill.) 3,620,728,000
14. Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.) 3,314,228,858<br>
15. William Marsh Rice University (Houston, Tex.) 3,302,000,000
16. Texas A&M University (College Station, Tex.) 3,240,693,652
17. Univ. of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Ind.) 3,123,454,523
18. Duke University (Durham, N.C.) 2,832,921,999
19. Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.) 2,454,294,000
20. Univ. of Southern California (Los Angeles, Calif.) 2,399,960,000<br>
21. Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.) 2,264,845,000
22. Univ. of Texas at Austin (Austin, Tex.) 2,038,938,294
23. Univ. of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, Calif.) 2,037,297,000<br>
24. Univ. of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.) 1,981,274,000
25. Mayo Foundation (Rochester, Minn.) 1,968,200,000
26. Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.) 1,909,337,000
27. Univ. of Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minn.) $1,774,436,617
28. Brown University (Providence, R.I.) 1,672,827,000<br>
29. Univ. of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Calif.) 1,527,525,000<br>
30. New York University (New York, N.Y.) 1,472,012,509
31. Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio) 1,470,000,000<br>
32. Rockefeller University (New York, N.Y.) 1,409,735,600<br>
33. Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.) 1,389,266,399
34. Univ. of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pa.) 1,370,498,000
35. California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, Calif.) 1,307,413,000
36. Grinnell College (Grinnell, Iowa) 1,291,781,000
37. Univ. of Rochester (Rochester, N.Y.) 1,257,146,000<br>
38. Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, N.C.) 1,232,118,534<br>
39. Boston College (Chestnut Hill, Mass.) 1,224,889,000
40. Univ. of Washington (Seattle, Wash.) 1,215,571,905
41. Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.) 1,207,131,043<br>
42. Wellesley College (Wellesley, Mass.) 1,180,405,000
43. Pomona College (Claremont, Calif.) 1,149,720,000
44. Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio) 1,139,292,045<br>
45. Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Ga.) 1,129,819,594
46. Pennsylvania State University (University Park, Pa.) 1,106,800,000<br>
47. Univ. of Richmond (Richmond, Va.) 1,103,390,000<br>
48. Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Tex.) 1,092,840,531<br>
49. Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, Pa.) 1,080,026,000<br>
50. Michigan State University (East Lansing, Mich.) 1,049,411,455</p>
<p>All of those places have way more people than Grinnell.</p>
<p>Outdated info. The 2005 endowment study results are up:</p>
<p>The real shame is that Grinnell doesn't have to be a Scrooge, considering its absolute endowment dominance among LACs.</p>
<h1>35 or #36 not a big deal.........</h1>
<p>They're actually pretty liberal when giving out money from what I noticed. But they work off of need-based money, like most of the other LACs. They meet 100% need....</p>
<p>it would be interesting to see per person amounts instead</p>
<p>don't room in east, they may be nice dorms but they're very unsociable, unless thats what you're going for. lets just say, you'll get lots of work done in east.</p>
<p>you might say, well, the isolation will let me get lots of work done, but face it, being in grinnell i ngeneral is isolation enough. room on north or south, not east.</p>
<p>you dont get to choose which dorm you get freshman year right? dont they tell you which one and then you are stuck there?</p>
<p>You can request specific dorms.</p>
<p>My daughter is a first year and in a triple in Langan Hall (one of the red brick gothic buildings on the north east side of campus.) She loves it!</p>
<p>My daughter has lived in two dorms on North as a 1st-year and junior - and also in East as a sophomore. As a senior, she's hoping to get a house with some friends and live off-campus. So far, her best experience was in one of the older dorms on North -- but that could partly be because it was her freshman year and it was the time when all of her roommates were also 1st-years and she was meeting new people every day. This year, she's in Younker, the largest dorm on North - and, if anything, the environment is less social than her experience in East. Partly it has to do with the student advisor - who just doesn't bother to organize anything. She made many more new friends in her hall on East last year. </p>
<p>I hate to see people bash the East dorms -- they are really beautiful. I also think that the campus dynamics are going to change in a big way when the new student center opens next year. It's located closest to the East dorms - but about equidistant from all the dorms - and I think it's going to pull the parts of the campus together -- very smart campus planning. Once the new campus center opens, there will only be one dining hall -- so all students, from all parts of campus, will meet there.</p>