<p>First off, is housing guaranteed for freshmen?</p>
<p>Do students have to live on campus for so many years? Many schools require freshmen and sophomores to live on campus.</p>
<p>I see there is apartment type housing available on campus. When are students able to apply for this? I'm sure it's not open to freshmen, but can one get in there as early as sophomore year?</p>
<p>I read on the website that all students, even commuter, are required to have a meal plan. Is that correct? No problem with that. Just wanting to get some feedback on what current students have purchased and whether it's enough or too much.</p>
<p>I think I may have covered this in another thread, but are students allowed to stay in dorms during fall/spring break and Thanksgiving/Easter holidays?</p>
<p>Thanks for any info. We are hoping to get a visit in to Saint Louis soon.</p>
<p>Oops, another question.</p>
<p>Son will be a biomedical engineering major. I see there's a biomedical engineering learning community. Is there a specific floor or a specific dorm that engineering students live in? Son would really like to live with other engineering majors.</p>
<p>When I visited SLU university last year they were in the process of making the switch to all freshmen AND sophomores being required to live on campus. So yes, they are all required now.</p>
<p>The student I stayed with was a sophomore and she said those apartments are really nice, but extremely hard to get into. I believe it may be some sort of lottery and I think a sophomore can try, but I am not sure how successful they would be.</p>
<p>I have been accepted to SLU as a BME major so I am also interested in the learning community. My guess would be griesdeck tower because it is coed.</p>
<p>When I stayed in a dorm with a student we actually talked about who gets first pick. She said it goes off of gpa, so kids with a higher gpa get first pick. She said that is why all her and her friends got to be so close together: they had close to first pick.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure housing is guaranteed now that freshmen and sophomores are required to live on campus. </p>
<p>Commuters must have at least the “commuter meal plan,” which consists of a small amount of flex dollars ($200 I think). I got the smallest meal plan and was fine. Sometimes it felt like too much because I really enjoyed exploring St Louis and the restaurants.</p>
<p>They usually announce the location of the themed floors later in the year. It seems to vary year to year which programs are in which building. </p>
<p>As far as housing placement after freshman year, GPA is just one of the factors. I forget all of them, but the number of people in the group you apply with and # of credit hours matter too (meaning freshmen with lots of AP credit & strong GPA have a good chance at apts as sophomores). If your GPA is too low, you can’t live in the on campus apts (<2.0 I think). The process is kind of a crap shoot. You sign up with a group of people (can sign up individually too), and your group gets a time slot based on many factors, some discussed above. You go in to your housing appointment, where they show all the available housing, and choose what you want based on what’s left. Many students complained but I always thought it was pretty fair.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response. A stupid question, but I’ve got to ask because don’t want to assume.</p>
<p>Are the dorms air conditioned? </p>
<p>We are from the south, so this is important to us. I am surprised to learn that many college dorms are not air conditioned, because of their location, I’m sure, but having been in DC in August, I was surprised to find some colleges there do not have air conditioned dorms. I think Marquette’s dorms aren’t air conditioned, but that’s a lot further north than Saint Louis.</p>
<p>For the record, some of the dorms at Marquette have A/C; Straz and Mashuda for sure, because I have stayed in those in the summer.</p>
<p>However, barring a very unusual spell of weather, it’s only warm enough to need A/C for perhaps the 1st 2-3 weeks of the fall semester and perhaps the last week or two of spring semester. Even then, there is the “lake effect”, where the wind blowing over the cold Lake Michigan water carries cool air even as far west as campus. If you are truly miserable in the heat (which I don’t ever remember happening when I was a student there), you can hang out in the union, the library, or any of the many other air-conditioned buildings.</p>
<p>Thanks, Stacey. Since we’re looking at schools in areas so different from where we live, there are so many little things that we take for granted here, like A/C, nonsmoking restaurants, public transportation, that shouldn’t be the deciding factor when choosing a college, but just things to be prepared for.</p>
<p>Just a note: St Louis has a public transit system, both light rail and bus. It’s no Chicago or New York, but it’s not awful. It can get you to all the nice and fun areas of St Louis, along with shopping and the airport. Many students will bash it, but I used it daily for my job and it worked out very well.</p>
<p>I am a senior at Parks College and have lived on Campus all four years. SLU is usually very generous in its housing scholarships as in incentive for students to stay on campus. My roommate is also an engineer and was actually the RA for the engineering learning community two years ago. Gries is not a bad place to live if you are social. It is more of the typical dorm environment. It is a co-ed building, but the areas are divided and doors are closed at night. If your son thrives off study groups and possibly Greek life, Gries is the place for him. However, when I was a Freshman I lived at Reinert. It is a converted hotel and offers a lot more space per person. Also, the food at Reinert is much better. The downside to Reinert is that it isn’t located right on the quad like Gries is and it is a 6 minute walk to the engineering building (known as MDH) instead of the two minute walk it is from Gries. However, Gries elevators are a traffic jam in the morning so unless you live low enough to take the stairs Reinert is still a shorter trip to class, which is important when you have an 8am and get up at 7:50. Also, a little bit of a walk to class goes a long way towards keeping off the Freshman 15.
Freshmen are required to live on campus and to have a meal plan. I would recommend the smallest meals plan, not the flex plan. I don’t think the flex plan is as good of a deal and most of the food outside the cafeterias is not as good for you. If there is any advice I can give someone living in a dorm for the first time is to take a daily vitamin. Being sick at school is awful. When I was a freshman, I got the 14 meal plan first semester. I switched second semester to the 5 meal plan and most weeks it was still too much. Something they don’t tell you is that it is cheaper to add more flex point to your meal plan after you run out than it is to buy the points up front. Almost half the price in fact.
As to moving into apartments after freshman year, the selection process does depend on grades, but SLU just purchased another apartment building, so the odds of getting a nice place next year is pretty good.
If you would like any more information, email <a href=“mailto:reslife@slu.edu”>reslife@slu.edu</a> or visit [Living</a> on Campus : Saint Louis University : SLU](<a href=“http://www.slu.edu/x24269.xml]Living”>http://www.slu.edu/x24269.xml).</p>
<p>Housing at SLU is mediocre - the basics are provided and aren’t bad by any means but beware rooms are small, bathrooms are pretty bad but its nothing out of the ordinary. Scholarships are tied to GPA and a lot of people can’t/won’t meet those so thats a risk. Also a portion of scholarship (2K usually) are tied to living on campus, which is fine when your a freshman but later its unfair and forces you to live in pretty bad rooms. Housing past freshman year is where SLU lags compared to peers - the available apartments are few and get taken pretty fast so many sophomores and juniors live in freshman dorms.
Another thing to consider is that dining options are minimal and close unbelievably early (some places close at 4:30 and most by 7 PM). This takes a while to adjust to, so be warned.</p>
<p>Because this is the first year that the housing requirement for freshman/sophomores was in place, and some upperclassmen DID get pushed into traditionally sophomore dorm space, I’m pretty sure that next year’s incoming class is going to be the first one whose scholarship is 100% tuition. It’ll make it more financially acceptable for upperclassmen to move off-campus because they won’t feel like they’re losing 2K of their scholarships. </p>
<p>I might as well throw in… SLU leased an entire apartment building right off campus (the Flats) to make sure that all students who wanted housing would get it. They originally said that the scholarship wouldn’t cover it, but they worked it out so that the housing scholarship transferred to this new place. As a resident, I’m really glad that they did. The Flats are probably the newest/nicest place that I’ll live untill I buy my own house. </p>
<p>(P.S… I’ve never heard of anyone losing their scholarship because they couldn’t maintain the GPA. I just checked the website, and depending on the scholarship you’re only required to have between a 2.0 and a 3.2… not unattainable at all.)</p>
<p>This is a link to a video a friend of mine made last year that shows his Clemons room. Most Walsh and Gries rooms are similar to this one so hopefully this helps. [YouTube</a> - Tour of Clemons Room (SLU)](<a href=“Tour of Clemons Room (SLU) - YouTube”>Tour of Clemons Room (SLU) - YouTube)</p>