Dorms!!

<p>Hey, I was wondering if there were any current Williams students with pictures of their actual dorm rooms (freshman dorms preferred). Thanks!</p>

<p>i stayed over for a weekend and loved the dorms and dorm set up, its kinda hard to explain so hopefully someone else can do that, it just seems like theres tons of common space and the doubles themselves arent so bad, i saw some pretty big singles too</p>

<p>For freshmen, I think the freshman quad (Williams and Sage) are the nicest dorms. Some of the Sage entries will be a little dicey this year and next because of the adjacent Baxter construction. </p>

<p>I don't think you can choose your dorm freshman year though.</p>

<p>You don't get to choose your housing freshman year, but it's all pretty good. There are five different freshman dorms: Williams and Sage Halls make up the Frosh Quad, East and Fay are in a quad with some other (non-freshman) dorms, and Lehman and Morgan are just sort of on their own. Each has good and not-so-good things about it, but overall they're better than pretty much any other school's freshman housing. I think about a third of the class lives singles, which is unusual for freshman anywhere else I think. Room size varies-- in the Frosh Quad rooms tend to be small (my single was reeeally teeny), but you are very centrally located and every 3-6 people have their own common room.<br>
This is the housing site: <a href="http://www.williams.edu/admin-depts/bg/housing/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.williams.edu/admin-depts/bg/housing/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>If you haven't read about the entry system yet, you should. It's a big part of freshman housing and frosh life in general on campus.</p>

<p>Campus housing is great overall, and VERY few people move off. I'd be glad to answer more specific questions about housing or whatever if you have 'em.</p>

<p>40% of Frosh rooms are singles and something like 90% of upperclassmen rooms are as well. Housing is fantastic--a typical set up (for all years) includes 5-20 people living in singles and doubles off of a common room (which is obviously much smaller for smaller groups and larger for larger groups). Groups of 4-8 share a bathroom, which tend to be unisex for Frosh and co-ed for upperclassmen (this is your choice--if you're not comfortable with co-ed bathrooms, there's no problem). </p>

<p>Some rooms (frosh rooms included) have balconies, and all come with nice wooden furniture. Common rooms and bathrooms are cleaned by B&G several times a week, and some dorms have TVs and cable provided free in the personal common rooms (all dorms have free TVs and cable in the main building common room). </p>

<p>Generally all Frosh claim to be living in the best Frosh dorm (which shows you how good they all are), although I'd argue for Williams myself (Willy-D pride!).</p>

<p>You can't be serious! Freshmen get apartment style dorms with their own rooms and common rooms with tv AND cable, along with supplied wooden furniture? And to top it all off, there are cleaning services?! Wow. This sounds way too good to be a college dorm room. Sounds like a hotel to me! :)</p>

<p>Just to clarify a few things from my previous post (and from haon's, a little bit): All frosh common rooms (and rooms) have cable hookups, but you pay for cable. There's free cable in one big lounge in every freshman dorm. The bathroom situation is even better than haon suggested above-- I'm a sophmore and share a bathroom with one other person. There are at least two or three dorms where private or semi-private bathrooms are the norm. Some of the dorms (not frosh dorms) come with free cable TV in all the common rooms, and every dorm has free cable in at least one place. My house (where 40 sophomores live) has two fully-furnished lounges with cable, a pool table, and a really nice kitchen. And twenty bathrooms. Just to put it in perspective, it's typically nowhere near the top of the housing picks for sophomores. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find better college housing than Williams offers.</p>

<p>listening to these descriptions makes my waiting worse!!!</p>

<p>oh, yeah, the freshman dorms are spectacular. they're definitely the best i've ever seen.</p>

<p>Dorms are nice. The one I'm staying in is very well furnished and clean with enough room to put all the stuff you need, but small enought to feel cozy. There's a common room outside my door. It's not always a good thing--especially when it's 3 in the morning and then a bunch of your entry mates decide to relocate to your common room, err...We're supposed to take out our own garbage, but if you drop it in the bathroom garbage bin then the clean up guy will take it out. The bathroom is clean and it gets cleaned every morning, i think. So it's all nice and clean for you when you need it. The dorms are well heated and all. Common room has enough space to put all the stuff you can't fit in your room. Some people i know move their desks into the common room along with all the other furniture leaving only the bed. My dorm came with a desk with 4 places to store stuff, a shelf and cupboard with a lot of compartments in it. There's a bed, duh, 2 overhead storage places, the equivalent of a table to store stuff on right beside your bed. I think that covers it, unless you needed to know that they're garbage bins(2).It's not bad, you'll live comfortably enough if the work isn't a problem.</p>

<p>how about libraries? i am kinda wondering since I will be stuck there many times :)</p>

<p>I am vegetarian and I was wondering about the food - I know that the dining halls provide some vegan and vegetarian dishes but will they really be enough? Or will I have to depend on restaurants in Williamstown for good vegetarian food?</p>

<p>gandalf, don't worry, Williams kids are very health conscious and there are many, many vegetarian choices. Everyone loves the food and choice of dining halls. There aren't too many restaurants in Williamstown but there actually is an Indian restaurant on Spring Street. It's a long way from the source, but they do okay.</p>

<p>To answer Hopeman's question about libraries, we've got two main libraries where people study. There's Sawyer, which houses the humanities and social sciences books, and Schow, the science library. the library site is <a href="http://www.williams.edu/library/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.williams.edu/library/&lt;/a> . It's not strictly "science people" in the science library, and vice-versa. People study wherever they're comfortable or whichever is closer to their dorm. Schow is very new and modern, with lots of very ex*****ve comfortable chairs. Sawyer is a bit older (and headed towards demolition in the next 10 years, I think), but very comfortable. Both have internet and power hookups all over the place for laptops, and computer labs for those who don't bring one to the library. Schow has group study rooms. Sawyer's got a variety of study spaces, including the "monkey carrells" in the basement, which are one of my favorite places to read. If you get a chance to visit, you should take a walk through each.</p>

<p>Now in terms of the vegetarian question, you have no reason to worry. The food tends to be all vegetarian except for whatever the actual meat dish at the meal is. There is also a vegan fridge at every dining hall with non-dairy products, if that's your thing.</p>

<p>gandalf--i'm not a vegetarian, but the veggie options are so good that I find myself eating as a vegetarian quite often. Even if the veggie options in one particular night don't suit your taste, the salad bars' are for the most part, excellent. Recently, Dining Services has been working on increasing the locally-grown and organic offerings (which now make up a significant portion of the menu). I believe there is also a dining hall which serves all hormone-free meat.</p>

<p>thanks a lot..that has definitely cleared some of the doubts I had about surviving at Williams :)</p>