I’ve read the info online for Univ South Carolina but truth - what are the best dorms for Freshman and how does the roommate selection work??
My daughter is a freshman at Univ of SC this year. She is in the Women’s quad with the Women in Science group. When you apply for housing, the application will ask for the learning communities that you prefer. If I remember correctly, she had to put in 3-4 in order of favorite to least. Here’s the list of those learning communities: https://www.sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/housing/living-learning-communities/.
Which learning community you child ends up in will be the dorm that your child will live in. Ex. Capstone scholars are mostly in the Capstone and Columbia dorm. Business students have the South quad, Honors are in Honors dorm, most of the girls are in the Womens quad (consist of 3 dorms), and so on. From what my daughter has seen, avoid Bates and Bates West. It is one of the farthest and older dorms at Univ of SC. Lincoln 650 (I believe these are 12-month leases) is one of the newer dorms, it is apartment style and on the west side of campus.
I also have a freshman girl this year. She’s in Capstone and LOVES her dorm. They are very social but also great students who study/support each other while having a great time. She has friends in Patterson and also in the Women’s Quads who say that they are not close-knit like the Capstone kids. If your son or daughter is not in Capstone, I’d encourage them to choose a traditional or suite-style dorm as opposed to apartment style if they want to be meet a lot of people. Park Place are amazing apartments, but very far from campus and harder to socialize, and the apartment-style Quad dorms seem to have kids that mostly keep to themselves. It’s all about the kind of experience you want to have–if being social is important, there are better dorms for that, if having privacy/peace and quiet, then a different kind of dorm would be ideal. My daughter joined a sorority and has made friends through that, but honestly her best friends/friend group are the ones she met in her dorm. I have heard that the Bates dorms are being torn down as early as this year, so they may be out of the equation which is good! A friend’s son got put in McBryde this year–very old boys’ dorm, hall bathrooms, but he’s met some good buddies and has liked living there.
I have a freshman son who got stuck in Cliff Apartments (was definitely not in his top 5). Like Bates, it has been slated for demolition, but I am not sure when that will happen. He was accepted in Nov of 2017 and would have been high on the list to get one of his top choices, but because he prioritized a roommate (who was accepted in the regular decision pool) he lost his spot and wound up in Cliff. It’s been an okay place to live but he doesn’t socialize with anyone there. His friends live elsewhere.