<p>Does anyone have any advice?
-The best residence halls? ( may prefer female only, not sure)
-classes? ( plan to major in accounting, currently university studies)
-Things to avoid?</p>
<p>I can’t speak too much to the residence halls. Many have been renovated since I was there and I wasn’t in any female only ones on account of being a guy. None of them are terrible. If you don’t have AC make sure you have two box fans between you and your roommate and you’ll be good to go. I also don’t know a lot about accounting classes since I was engineering.</p>
<p>I can do general freshman advice though! The biggest thing to avoid is eating at Shultz. It’s terrible. The best dining hall is West End, but don’t eat there every day or you’ll blow through your meal plan. The new dining hall looks like it’ll be pretty good too.</p>
<p>Speaking of meal plans, that plan isn’t going to get you three meals a day every day, and that’s for the best. Get some cereal and milk, and some bread and peanutbutter, and whatever else you can make in a microwave and the dorm kitchen. You’ll tend to eat more at the dining halls than you would normally (portions are usually bigish and the ‘all you can eat’ places encourage, well, eating more) so if you’re doing three meals there you’ll end up eating more than you want unless you’re very conscious about it. Also spend a little cash to try places off campus occasionally. The Cellar is a great greek pasta/pizza place, Sycamore Deli is a legendary sandwich place for a reason, and there are a ton of other good places in town.</p>
<p>It’s a good idea to go to all of your classes first semester. Maybe second semester you’ll have an idea of what classes you can skip and how often (and there will be classes that you can skip occasionally) but more often than not people do it a bit too often freshman year and it costs them. If you have some amazing once in a lifetime opportunity and you’ll have to skip a class you know nothing big is going on in take it though.</p>
<p>Everyone says to leave your dorm door open when you’re in the room hanging out and that is because it is good advice. People are really friendly, especially in the first couple months, and you’ll probably get asked to go with a herd of people to a dining hall or play volleyball and stuff. It’s fun.</p>
<p>Partying is a lot of fun. Partying is how a lot of people flunk out. That is to say, there is a balance between how much you should be partying and how much you should be doing everything else. Don’t shut yourself in your room studying all day (unless it’s finals week or something) and don’t neglect your responsibilities. You’ll have to find what that balance is for you though; some people can go out multiple nights during the week and pull amazing grades but most can’t.</p>
<p>Don’t be mean to the ducks on the duck pond. They will wait until you’re bringing a girl to the duckpond to impress her and then they will attack and bite you. And I’ll be sitting on the bench feeding them laughing. Actually I won’t be because I don’t live in VA but I’ll be laughing in spirit.</p>
<p>As always, I agree with Chuy. I used his advice last year when I was preparing for my freshman Engineering year.</p>
<p>You only get to select a preference of smoking/non-smoking, visitation option and co-ed or not on the housing form. So, really it is not worth worrying about the “best” dorm, it is random luck. All dorms end up working out fine, even when you do not get your preferences.</p>
<p>Visitation option is completely ignored anyway unless you’re corps. I think some of the dorms have slightly different policies but in the end it boils down to “Is this causing a problem with your roommate.” If the answer is no then nobody will every say anything about it, if the answer is yes then even if you’re within the letter of the rule your RA is going to have a sit down with you.</p>
<p>I had the most hard-ass RA imaginable my sophomore year and he knew my girlfriend would stay over when my roommate was gone, even though it technically violated the policy. All I ever got was a friendly (and incredibly awkward) request to please move my bed off the wall we shared.</p>
<p>Partying in the dorms is a big no-no though. Some people get away with it, but it is by far the worst way to get busted. Having a couple drinks with a very small number of friends where nothing is audible in the hall? Ok. Music and alcohol you can’t hide in fewer than 10 seconds? Problem.</p>
<p>Do you Guys know when we worry about the housing form ? Before or after we accept the offer?</p>
<p>VT should have sent all admitted applicants a brochure with a timeline on what to do now. It has specific instructions on housing.</p>