Ugh… I paid my deposit so late (May 1st), so even though I really want to live in South, it’s kinda impossible now. I really want to live in a dorm that is close to campus and has a dorm culture. I put down “no preference” for how many roommate do I want. Should I put down South, BJ, and New grad? Or should I do BJ, New grad, and I house (since South is definitely gone)? I really don’t want to be assigned to a house that is not on my list. Any advice please?
I have heard BJ is even harder to get in than South and Max. Many students like its Gothic Architecture and most its rooms are singles.
All four on-campus dorms may not be available for you.
There should be some boarder-line on campus dorms for you. You can check this housing map at
https://housing.uchicago.edu/community_living/residence_hall_map/
Here’s some advice, for you and for everyone else obsessing about dorm choice: Chill out a little. It matters far, far less than you think it does. I would venture to say that for most students their first-year dorm assignment ceases to be important by the end of the first quarter of their first year, and over the course of an undergraduate career it constitutes a very minor factor in your overall experience.
Your dorm and your house seem like the most important thing in the world when you show up at college, and a great deal of your social life initially revolves around them. However, if you are like most people – if you are like almost everyone – within a few months you will realize that your house relationships, based as they are essentially on random selection, are not all that great, and that your real friends are probably going to be found elsewhere. It’s practically a universal element of the college experience that you spend your first fall making friends with the people who live near you and the following spring and fall extracting yourself from those friendships and forming stronger, more lasting friendships with people with whom you have more in common than a shared bathroom.
The dorms do develop somewhat distinctive characters, it’s true, but what’s far more important to your experience is what your character is. And there’s the problem: At 17, there’s a good chance you don’t really know what your own character is, or that you are actively lying to yourself about it. And if that’s not you – because some people do know themselves – it’s very likely to be your roommate or the person across the hall from you. Some people choose the “social” dorm because they are social, but lots of people choose it because they wish they were social or they think they would like to be more social. And sometimes that works out but a lot of the time it doesn’t. Some people think of themselves as totally studious, but when they get into a college environment that is way less stratified than their high school, and their parents aren’t around to remind them all the time who they are supposed to be, they discover that, hey, they’re not as completely focused on studying as they thought. Meanwhile, someone who thought of himself as a baller in high school learns that, freed from a lot of peer pressure, he would prefer to drink less and work more.
So lots of people’s character is in flux during the first few quarters of college, and the odd microclimates that creates have a lot more to do with each individual’s experience than the overall character of the dorm does. And the differences between the dorms – like lots of minor differences between very similar things – get way overemphasized when people compare one dorm to another. Social people living in non-social dorms are very social and have lives that are very little different from those of the social people in social dorms, and the same is true with non-social people. You should also consider that some of the differences that seem like they could be really important – how many blocks you walk to class, what the bathroom sharing arrangements are – turn out to be completely unimportant. Humans are really good at adapting to stuff like that.
It all sorts out and stabilizes pretty quickly. The weirdness and missteps of your first few months more or less fade from memory as you grow into what your authentic college experience is going to be. Your initial dorm placement pretty much has nothing to do with that.
Akak: I will not contradict JHS advice above. It is spot on throughout, particularly (I feel) the part about extracting yourself from year 1 friendships and potentially creating more lasting friendships starting year 2.
But you have a practical decision to make now, so of the choices you list I’d choose the latter if you don’t want to be assigned to a dorm you did not request. Although if I were a potential student I might switch the order of your request and place IHouse ahead of New Grad because you don’t have to cross the midway to get to the main quad. But on the other hand, the new grad dorm is one of the ones being consolidated into the Campus North dorm in the fall of 2016, so you’d only be there 1 year and living in the new dorm might be an enticing prospect for you. Another consideration is that you may (likely) decide to live in an apartment after year 1 or 2 so in that event you may only be making a 1 or 2 year decision. Apartments are very good and plentiful in Hyde Park…and generally cheaper. Son is moving to an apartment for year 3 with close, compatible friends and he seems very happy about it.
Agree with JHS and Kaukauna.
One thing you should consider is the convenience of dorm in the context of daily activities.
E.g., is it close enough to a dinning hall (there are only two available now). Walking to a dinning hall on weekends for breakfast in a snowy day may not be too fun.
A good news is buses stop at every dorm. It could be very handy in a cold winter evening.
Thank you all so much!!!