<p>My son is a sophomore. Both he and person he had agreed to room with had terrible numbers last year and ended up on waiting list. Best offer was a large ML double (I believe he was also offered a Willets option but turned it down; he doesn’t click with Willets culture). Son loves ML and is staying next year, in a single as part of a block.</p>
<p>One small caveat: son has a car - was able to get an ML parking permit. Can’t park on campus proper but having the car for errands or to park nearer campus when necessary has been a plus.</p>
<p>Willets is a lively place, mostly due to its architecture. Halls are long and straight, rooms are mostly doubles placed directly across from one another. Walls are thin. But, it can be a lot of fun, and the friends I made there have been friends for life (I graduated over 25 years ago). I was upset at first when I had to live there my sophomore year, but now I would not trade that experience.
My son just did ride the tide and stayed in Willets.</p>
<p>Willets is also unique in being almost exclusively freshmen and sophmore doubles, thus lacking the calming influence of grizzled veteran juniors and seniors. It tends to be the place for students who want to meet a lot of other students and live in a socially lively dorm. </p>
<p>It’s the closest thing Swarthmore has to the “freshman dorms” at other schools.</p>
<p>This is tricky. I believe he perceives Willets as having more of a “party” atmosphere, a bit noisier, a bit more drinking, than some other options. (Willets had a similar rep when I attended - made me smile when he told me). That said, he (and I) have many friends who love(d) Willets. It’s all a matter of where you’re most comfortable and what you’re looking for.</p>
<p>It also shows how impossible it would be to answer “what’s the best dorm” or “what’s the typical Swattie like…”</p>
<p>It’s different for each Swattie and probably for each group of years. I know that, in my daughter’s sophmore lottery, Willets was THE preference. Sold instantly with high block numbers, rooms were gone first with regular lottery numbers. Everyone wanted “on-campus”.</p>
<p>But, other years, other Swatties, would quite reasonably turn down Willets for Mary Lyons.</p>
<p>Myrt Westphall quietly make a little move a few years back to stock Willets with a few halls of self-professed “quiet types” from the freshmen housing questionairres. This apparently had the desired effect of tamping down the traditional Willets ambience, just a bit.</p>
<p>If you want a single your sophomore year, you can get it, even if you get a bad number. It just means concocting a story as to why you can’t live with your roommate and then relentlessly campaigning the administration to be allowed to move out of your room. IIRC, it took about a month to work.</p>
<p>When it comes to picking a dorm, it’s mostly about the social characteristics of a given dorm’s dwellers. There are definitely personality differences between PPR and, say, Willets. One thing, though, is that the distance to ML truly does make it second rate.</p>
<p>Yeah. But, let’s be honest. It’s not like he could spend every waking hour dealing with the administration when, in fact, he also had classes in which he was being assigned an unending onslaught of busy work. Perhaps if his major had been something like economics or dance he would have been able to get it done in a couple of weeks.</p>
<p>My S was assigned to Willets as a freshman, and while he was concerned about the “party” reputation, it was clear that year that Myrt Westphal had taken steps to “readjust” the atmosphere in the dorm by assigning a bunch of quieter students to Willets. Willets was “toned down” with that little adjustment. He had a terrible lottery number sophomore year but desperately wanted a single, so he took one which was offered in ML basement. It was truly a dungeon and they no longer use the basement. His reward was a Wharton single for both junior and senior year.</p>
<p>And last year there was definitely a sizeable rising sophomore contingent favoring Willets. As I said, it’s all subjective. I did warn my son that friends of mine who ended up in ML under protest sophomore year chose to stay in subsequent years. Apparently it grew on them (not literally, they weren’t in the mouldy basement (smile).</p>
<p>I’m a junior transfer who was pretty much promised a single (they like to try to give upperclass transfers a single) and was a bit ticked off when I just got my assignment of a Willets room with a roommate.</p>
<p>On the floor plan, though, the room is smaller than the others and seems to be attached to another room…does that mean there is a common room? (Please God say yes, I HATE sharing a bedroom.)</p>
<p>I’m not absolutely positive, but I believe those rooms are two-room doubles, i.e. two singles that share a little entryway common space. Those rooms historically have gone to seniors and junior lottery numbers. There is no way that seniors would be picking Willets doubles.</p>
<p>Actually, not all of those rooms even appear on the lottery or blocking lists, so they may be among the (often primo) rooms the housing office holds in their back pocket.</p>
<p>If they are two-room doubles, that would be just about ideal. The benefits of a single with a built-in roommate “friend” so you don’t feel adrift in you new campus.</p>
<p>I believe that alcove might properly be refered to as a “breakfast nook” in Swattie lingo? I know that’s how my daughter refered to her alcove at the end of the hall in Mertz.</p>
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<p>A single in Willets would be a pretty good deal for a transfer student. Willets main attraction is the ability to meet a lot of fellow students quickly and effficiently. There are a lot of upperclass dorms where inhabitants have their established circle of friends and that’s that. For example, you would not meet a lot of people in Worth. Mertz and Wharton have no sophmores or juniors to speak of. The “off-campus” dorms wouldn’t be ideal for a transfer. I’d say a single in Willets with a breakfast nook is not a bad outcome at all.</p>
<p>Those tiny rooms on the very end of the hall? I lived in one last year as a junior transfer. (In our particular lingo that little walk-through space was called the “cove” and the girl in the adjoining room my “cove-mate.”) Yeah, the room’s small, but I really enjoyed living there, and got to know a whole lot of people because of the friendly Willets vibe. That room also has a few perks because, unlike nearly every other Willets room, it doesn’t open straight out onto the hall, giving you a tad more privacy and sound insulation. Just make sure to bring some curtains, as the windows are huge.</p>
<p>Hope this reassures you a bit about Willets - I was so upset when I found out I was living in the underclassmen party dorm last year, but ended up having a really wonderful living experience my first year at Swat. </p>
<p>1000Bpm, feel free to ask about other transfer stuff. There will also be a bunch of us as group leaders at orientation.</p>