My son is currently working on his Freshman Housing application and essay and several questions have come up. We’d appreciate input from current/recent H freshmen or parents.
If a student is placed in a suite, or an arrangement with more than one sleeping room, are the pairings of two students set by the FDO in advance, or do the groups of suite mates decide who rooms with whom?
If there is a single room in the suite, how is it decided who gets it? If someone had been paired up with the "winner" of the single, who lives with the "winner's" previously-assigned roommate?
Do you find out contact info of ALL suite mates in the summer, or just your roommate? If there are three sleeping rooms in a suite, how do you coordinate things like bringing a TV, getting furniture for the common room, etc?
The FDO said something in an email about nobody choosing a bed until all suite mates are present? Does that mean that on move-in day we might be there till evening waiting on a late-arriving suite mate? Or that we don't help our student set up his space? Or that we leave him and his suitcases/duffel bags and let the kids work it out? We had hoped to be able to help him get set up, but our flight home is at dinner time on move-in day, so we will need to leave for the airport by 2 pm.
Any advice or info on these details would be appreciated.
Suite mates are assigned by the FDO, however beds are selected by suite mates once everyone has arrived. The configuration of beds/bedrooms will determine bunkmates/roommates.
That's up to your son and his suite mates. My daughter had this situation her freshman year in Matthews. There were three suite mates and two bedrooms -- one bedroom was just large enough for a bed, but couldn't fit a desk or dresser (those were kept in the common room), and a larger bedroom which had just enough room for two beds and two dressers, but not desks (those were also kept in the common room). My daughter and her suite mates drew straws with the shortest straw getting the single. My daughter didn't get the single, but got along well with her bunkmate/roommate.
The FDO should send your son the names and contact information of his suite mates sometime in June. Your son should friend his suite mates on Facebook and/or email them to coordinate things like TV's, refrigerator, brooms, vacuums, ironing board/iron, rugs, furniture, etc. The school does supply window fans, and vacuums/brooms are available as loan-outs to students from housekeeping.
Yes, it could mean that your son won't be able to choose his bed/room until the evening when all his suite mates have arrived. You might be able to alleviate this headache by having your son communicate with all his suite mates to make sure everyone arrives in the morning. If one suite mate is not able to arrive until after you leave, I'm sure your son can manage unpacking by himself.
@Eidetic - if your son ends up in a suite, make sure you look carefully at the floor plan before buying any furniture. Some suites are rather tight - bedrooms with no room for desks, thus the desks end up in the common room, and there may not be much wall space left for extra furniture.
Regarding bed choice - freshmen who take part in pre-orientation programs move in the evening before the official move-in day. They don’t want students who arrive on move-in day to be disadvantaged, hence this rule.
I suspect all suite mates will have arrived by the time you leave for the airport - if not, I’m sure you son will be able to get settled in fine without you!
Hmmm, @gibby, don’t remember the college ever providing window fans. DS '17 owns several he bought. Seems like you only need them for three weeks in the fall and commencement week in the spring. Buy fans that are easy to store.
Many people in a Matthews-style suite (two bedrooms and three roommates) will rotate the single.
Like @BldrDad said, wait before buying any furniture.
Most kids are there in the morning–I’d say fewer than 1 out 10 arrives after 2 p.m., and since your child will have the contact information for all his suitemates (and no doubt be in a groupme instantly after receiving this information), he will know when they plan to arrive. The rule that no one chooses rooms or even beds is one of the few guidelines given to incoming freshmen. It is so absolute that DS was a little shocked when he went out about 9 a.m. to grab a few things and came back thirty minutes later to find that a football-playing roommate had come in and taken the best bedroom and bed in their Wigglesworth suite. DS decided to let it go without mentioning it. He did not end up staying with that roommate after freshman year, though the bedroom grab was not the only reason.
Our daughter was the last to arrive at about 9:00 in the morning move in day. All of her other roommates had done pre orientation programs and had moved in the day before. With the exception of one young woman they were all quite situated and it would have been petty to have asked them to move. Our daughter ended up using the common room as her room. (Canaday) we had large dividers to create privacy for her and as a result everyone had a single. (5 girls)
While our daughter got along well with all of her roommates none of them became her block mates.
Perhaps it was different when @gibby 's DD went to Harvard, but I assure you that Harvard does not provide fans.
Agreed. On the flip side, some groups also decide it’s not worth the effort to switch. But kids are generally good about figuring these things out for themselves.
@Eidetic, your son will get a list of all his suitemates if he is placed in a suite. No one is assigned a specific room within the suite. When there are more suitemates than there are bedrooms (the typical scenario), the kids figure out how they want to divide the rooms on their own. My daughter’s suitemates decided to rotate the singles mid year so everyone had a chance at having her own room. They made the decision how to allocate space on their own and only after everyone was present. I can’t believe there are kids who violated the clear policy to wait for everyone to be present before making these decisions. That’s pretty obnoxious and I hope, unusual.
There are definitely kids who think they’ll be able to circumvent the rules. In my experience, the roommate(s) will under no circumstance allow that to happen. I’m sure the Freshman Deans just love move-in days.
The pre-orientation programs and the fact that kids who participate in them end up in their rooms the day before move in day lends itself to some potential difficulty.
The kids have to sleep some where so they make their beds, they have to put their stuff some where so they put them in “their” rooms.
We couldn’t have been there any earlier move in morning and three of four of our daughters roommates were already some what situated in “their” rooms. One of her roommates who was a really sweet kid with a domineering parent had clearly taken up a permanent stake. (that was annoying) So our daughter either doubled in a fairly small room or she could use the common room (in Canaday they are larger but not nearly as large as other Freshman houses). She also didn’t use the entire common room as her own room. It was agreeable to everyone and there was never an issue with noise or privacy.
It will be the first time you will be able to “park your car in Harvard yard”. For parents that are new here PM me if you want a move in secret.
Not that hard to strip a bed and remake a new bed. And for one night, it’s not that essential that they make their bed with the mattress topper, pillow shams, etc.
Alternatively, they could do what I did, and left it in their luggage. Waiting another day to unpack is not the end of the world.
The thing that incoming freshman need to keep in mind - you will be living with this person/these people for the next 9 months. You want to get of the right foot with your roommate because this is the kid that you will be appreciative of when he gets your prescription when your sick, will vacate the room when you want to “entertain,” and won’t raise a stink when your HS friend/sibling parks on the floor of the common room for a few days. Don’t win the battle to lose the war.
If a student is placed in a suite, or an arrangement with more than one sleeping room, are the pairings of two students set by the FDO in advance, or do the groups of suite mates decide who rooms with whom?
The group of suite mates decide who rooms with who once they all arrive on campus. I was assigned a suite with 2 other people. We were given a bathroom, a common room, and two bedrooms. One with one bed, and one with a bunk bed. You could debunk the beds if you wanted to, but the room was already quite small so we didn't. The boys downstairs had an identical floor plan and they opted to debunk the beds and move one into the common room, so they would all have their own bedroom, but we chose to use the common room as a space where we could work and where visitors could hang out. We put a couch in there with other seating as well as all of our desks. So, we all had the single for a third of the year, and then the rest of the time, we stayed in the bunkbed. It worked out just fine.
If there is a single room in the suite, how is it decided who gets it? If someone had been paired up with the "winner" of the single, who lives with the "winner's" previously-assigned roommate?
It can be done all different ways. We did the "pick a number between 1 and 10" game to see who got our single first and then we just decided to rotate. I have other friends who just did rooming assignments the first day and then stayed there.
Do you find out contact info of ALL suite mates in the summer, or just your roommate? If there are three sleeping rooms in a suite, how do you coordinate things like bringing a TV, getting furniture for the common room, etc?
Your suite mates are essentially your roommates, so you'll be informed of everyone in your suite. I don't think of just the person in my bedroom as my roommate. When people ask who my roommates are, I give the names of all the people in my suite.
Most dorms have TV's in the common rooms, but if you want to bring a tv, then that's fine. As for furniture, the rooms come with desks and bookshelves for everyone. There are also drawers, and a decent amount of closet space, depending on your dorm. The only thing my roommates and I bought furniture wise was a futon, and a funky chair. We split the cost of the futon, and then someone bought the chair themselves because they wanted it. At the end of the year, I didn't really want the futon, so we gave it to one roommate who was willing to pay the cost to store it. it was only 60 bucks out of my pocket, and for sophomore year, you pretty much end up living with the same people for the rest of your time there, so most likely i will contribute to the cost of one more couch that I will use for the rest of my time here. Not a huge deal. We also split the cost of renting a fridge from the school. They deliver it, clean it during breaks. and then remove it at the end of the year. No need to store a fridge or anything like that. It's super convenient. Other things, we just bought ourselves. One roommate got decorative pillows, another brought a rug, i brought wall art. It's whatever you and your roommates decide you want to do. I have a friend who mom's just came in and decorated everything. Other roommates didn't contribute a dime. It really just depends, but I do think splitting the cost of big ticket items is probably easiest and most fair.
The FDO said something in an email about nobody choosing a bed until all suite mates are present? Does that mean that on move-in day we might be there till evening waiting on a late-arriving suite mate? Or that we don't help our student set up his space? Or that we leave him and his suitcases/duffel bags and let the kids work it out? We had hoped to be able to help him get set up, but our flight home is at dinner time on move-in day, so we will need to leave for the airport by 2 pm.
Chances are, they're not going to arrive late evening. If they do a pre-orientation program, which i believe more than half of the students do, they will already be there. Also, there are activities and things you have to be present for that evening, so you won't be waiting around all day for people to show up. Also, in the odd chance that does happen, there's a good chance the students would have talked about it before hand, and will be able to work it out like adults. You will probably be able to help your son set up. It makes the process a lot quicker. for my roommates and I, all three of our moms were there to help.
And keep in mind people don’t always follow the FDO’s recommendation to wait. We got a suite for 4 with two double rooms that were pretty much the same, so the first two girls who arrived said they’d agreed to live together and took one room. Me and the other girl got the other. It ended up working fabulously for us - the one I ended up with is my best friend and blockmate, and I didn’t want to be petty and make people move (even though they technically were supposed to wait, and their room was slightly better)
And I should add that if someone gets there first and takes pictures of the rooms, they could get divided up that way. Unless there’s a single, in which case most kids are gonna want it and you’ll have to pull straws.
When my D attended she was placed in Thayer with 2 roommates. She and another roommate did pre-orientation programs. They were allowed to spend the night in their dorm room the night before move-in day. However, they waited until the 3rd roommate showed up before picking beds and rooms. The 3rd roommate showed up after lunch. The girls chose rooms and beds based on the longest straw. My D initially was in a room with another roommate and bunk bed. The other roommate had her own bed and room. The girls decided they all wanted their own space and right before the 1st semester was over, they moved one of the beds into the common room. The girls had their own spaces and it worked out well.
In the exception to everything, my son was assigned a double and his roommate had no FB account and little online presence at all hence zero pre-move-in communication (highly unusual) so he was a “mystery man” and then became more so when he didn’t turn up on move-in day. You could see the residential staff getting more and more concerned. Meanwhile we had my son’s stuff all piled up in a corner so as not to break “the rule.” By mid-afternoon, with no sign of him we all decided that he could claim a bed and unpack everything. We parents were disappointed at not being able to meet the one and only roommate - we left Boston that evening, from memory. We wondered if our son would even have a roommate. And, as someone who requested a suite on the housing form, and wound up with the only double in his house…(we’ve never been able to figure that one out) … we were all hoping he wouldn’t wind up with a single on his own. Everyone else was doing the roommate bonding thing and my son was definitely a little lonely that night.
His roommate turned up the next morning. Turns out he lived fairly nearby and hadn’t understood that move-in day wasn’t a flexible thing, and it was his birthday and he was having one last one at home with his family. It all works out in the end. Two years later the two of them, plus 5 out of 6 guys in the suite right across from them are still in a blocking group, happily living the suite life in Mather. So, ultimately, common sense dictates what to do.
