<p>What was your experience living in a frosh-soph dorm? Would you have closer relationships because of the closer age group? </p>
<p>What about a dorm building with freshmen through seniors? What was that experience?</p>
<p>At my school, you can only dorm if you’re a freshman (although for the 2012-2013 incoming freshmen, they’re going to be allowed the option of staying for the sophomore year. It’s the first time my school’s allowing that) or a first-year transfer student, so I wouldn’t know what living in a frosh-soph dorm would be like. When I lived in the dorms, I was in a building that housed other transfer students like me. After their freshman year or first year of transfer, students are expected to find an apartment to live in (living in a college town has its perks in that the apartments are fairly affordable). A dorm building with freshmen through seniors is nonexistent here.</p>
<p>bumping time</p>
<p>At my school, all freshmen are required to live in an all freshmen dorm (unless maybe like you live in town with your parents or something like that). There are 4 freshmen dorms. I lived in the biggest one, which was connected by a floor lounge on each of 7 floors to another freshmen dorm, so it got pretty crazy at times because you could easily go back and forth between the 2 dorms. Yes it’s good because you’re all freshmen, all going through the same stuff and all, but it’s also all a bunch of really immature new college students and a lot of freshmen don’t know how to handle being away from home.</p>
<p>I attended Mt. Holyoke, where all classes were housed together, and to me, no other housing is as effective. My D is at a school with “developmental housing” where classes are housed separately, progressing from freshmen in dorms, to sophomores in suites, to juniors in suite/apartments to seniors in townhouses farthest from campus center. No place else in life do you only live with people your own age, which is why I don’t like that model of housing. At Mt. Holyoke, first year students could get to know upper classmen in the dorms, and had them to turn to for advice on everything from choosing classes, to relationship advice, to handling homesickness. You were able to really develop close relationships with all ages of students, not just your own age, which is really important when you are looking for inspiration and mentors closer in age than professors! Sure, you can get to know upper-classmen in other ways, but that time hanging out in the dorms, studying or snacking, etc, is when you really have time to chat and get to know people beyond the classroom. I don’t understand at all the mentality of separating classes for housing. Having a bunch of homesick freshman all living together just makes for a bunch of freshman leaving the school two or three weeks into the year to return home! (Also, seniors in my dorms never encouraged under-aged drinking, or anything like that, so I don’t think that is a good enough reason to argue for separation of classes for housing.)</p>
<p>I lived in what was supposed to be a freshman dorm, but we ended up having some older people in there (one guy who looked 40 and another who was 23 and another who was 21.) It was mostly freshmen, but like I said, there were some older people in the mix.</p>
<p>I ended up hanging out mostly with the freshmen. The older crowd made older friends and kind of did their own thing. After visiting other freshman dorms (that were more like 99% freshmen), I decided that my dorm was a lot like theirs and it didn’t really matter much whether or not it was all freshmen or just a mix.</p>
<p>At USC, we don’t have any specific age-divided housing. Every dorm on campus houses at least some freshmen. And I believe most, if not all housing hosts sophomores-seniors. All of the dorm-style buildings (suite style or traditional) are usually freshman dorms, but there end up being some upperclassmen in them. All of the apartment-style buildings are supposed to be for upperclassmen, but some freshmen end up in them.</p>
<p>Even communities like the French House, which freshmen weren’t even allowed to apply to had freshmen living in them.</p>