<p>Hi friends,
Just a couple things to note:
We will have Honors Housing community options available in Ridgecrest, Blount, Paty and Somerville this year. The new options will allow Honors students to live with other Honors students in more traditional communities, which can be desirable for many reasons.</p>
<p>There will be late Bama Bound sessions available and students are allowed to move in completely the day before their sessions (last year, these dates were Aug. 14 and 15), which could allow savings on airfare.</p>
<p>There is at least one advantage to having credits for the sake of credits, and that is registration priority. My D took the Spanish CLEP and scored high enough to get 14 credits. She didn’t need them all - she’s in a major where she needed C credits, which satisfied her C/FL requirement, and she had more than she needed to satisfy the Humanities requirement. However, those extra credits allowed her to register earlier, which has resulted in very satisfactory schedules, starting 2nd semester of freshman year.</p>
<p>Janine, thank you so much for letting everyone know what honors housing will be available next year. Other options besides Ridgecrest will be great for those students who want a more traditional dorm for cost or other reasons. Thank you again!</p>
<p>Yes, I am a student. People make cleaning the suite bathroom into such a big deal on this website. It’s not. Unless one has a terrible, terrible aim, it takes 7 minutes once a week and the place stays pretty darn clean. It’s not a big bathroom, there’s no tub. </p>
<p>As for the older dorms: They are not very nice. I wonder how much mold has built up over the years in their vents? </p>
<p>A bike really isn’t necessary. The Crimson Ride is fantastic and goes pretty much everywhere on campus. I don’t know about the weekends though, I have a car, so I just drive then.</p>
<p>My son is “surviving” perfectly fine so far this school year in an older dorm (which has a very good location and attached remodeled cafeteria with great hours) – Mary Burke West. Just couldn’t justify the very high cost of the 4-bedroom super suites! He wanted to minimize loans. (And yes, he does appreciate that the community restrooms are professionally cleaned at least once a day. They actually do provide a decent amount of privacy…more so than I’ve seen in other dorm community restrooms.) Yes, it’s an old dorm, but it’s not like he’s going to be living there for 10 years! Most rooms are doubles, but there are some suites in the dorm that have some single rooms (slightly higher price).</p>
<p>My DS is in Burke East in a Suite of five boys who share a bathroom with two showers and two toilets between them. He is managing very well but for one thing. He is getting stuck cleaning the bathroom. The other boys do not seem to be bothered that it is dirty. So you might be better off in a traditional room in Burke since those bathrooms are cleaned daily. </p>
<p>Thank you Janine for letting us know about different options this year. </p>
<p>As far as cleaning the bathrooms… I have two males in my household and I don’t know where they aim, but I end up cleaning up after them in places you would not think are possible to reach, unless you really try. Interestingly enough, they both claim it cannot possibly be them.</p>
<p>Cost is an issue. My son says that he is “OK with whatever” since he is not paying, so I am sure he will survive in the traditional dorm. </p>
<p>I just enrolled and found a potential roommate. She isn’t 100% sold on bama yet but she’s visiting December or early January. I know I for sure want to live in tutweiler and she’s def my first choice in terms of a roommate. I’ve been in contact with other people just in case this falls through. I saw something about a February deadline. Will we be able to get a room in tut with eachother if we wait to do our housing application in January?</p>
<p>My freshman son lives in Honors Housing. It is quite nice, and even with three suitemates, he has some privacy in his own small room. He has taken on the job of keeping the microwave clean (amazing how disgusting microwaves can get.) As far as general cleaning, I think he and his suitemates are working well together to keep things tidy. We went ahead with Honors Housing despite the cost because we understood that if students don’t live in Honors Housing during the freshman year, they do not have the choice to move into Honors Housing the following year. I wanted him to try it out. The lower-priced housing is very tempting, especially Burke and the convenient dining hall (which seems to offer more traditional food beyond pizza and burgers), but my son has discovered that the dining plan does not work well for him at all. He’s lost 15 pounds since he arrived, and he was already pretty slim. So he needs to be able to cook in the suite via the microwave (the reason he keeps it clean) and it is nice to have a full-size refrigerator and the community kitchens available too. I would like him to remain on campus in Honors Housing at least for the sophomore year, and since I am absolutely positive he will not be signing up for the dining plan next year, we will save some money there to offset the higher cost of the Honors housing. I send him Amazon Pantry boxes full of food, and he has a set of pans, a crockpot, a microwave pasta cooker, a microwave ramen cooker, and a microwave egg poacher (he adds eggs to the ramen.) What I cannot send him, he walks to Publix to buy or takes the Sunday bus to Target. On rare occasions, he will buy milk at the on-campus Lakeside Market, but they charge $7.00 for a gallon of milk so he tries to avoid that.</p>
<p>What has surprised him somewhat is how empty the campus gets, even with all of the out of state students like himself. Going to a “residential” college was important to him, especially coming from out of state, and was a deciding factor in choosing Alabama over his other options, and being a part of the Honors community added to that residential impression, but it has not turned out to be as residential as he thought. His building is pretty empty most of the time, and the campus clears out on the weekends. Maybe that is just the Honors Housing side of the campus. Over the recent fall break, it may have just been him, and two of his roommates (also out of staters), and a couple of the RAs left in the building (and Fall Break is not just two days as the calendar shows, but is extended for most of the week because many professors cancel classes - I never even noticed that there was a Fall break, so we did not make any plans for him.) It was dead, dead, dead. And there is only so much one can do in Tuscaloosa. Friendly town, but he’s already explored the majority of it either via the buses or on foot, and it is just November.</p>
<p>But it is nice to have so many options, and I am all for keeping costs down, that’s for sure :)</p>
<p>@chesterton I remember hearing the kids could get “to-go” large drinks of milk from the Dinin Hall. Since your son is on the unlimited meal plan (unless he went Greek), encourage him to get his milk this way. Saves a ton.</p>
<p>Wow, Longhaul. Thanks for the rec link. I will let my D2 know about it. She is interested in Bama for college.</p>
<p>My D1 is a senior at Bama this year. She lives on-campus in a dorm. I visited her during Fall Break and it was dead. I thought I would have some fun on Saturday and watch football at the Ferg. No way! It was closed. No food, no tv , no game! I left campus. :)</p>
<p>Yes, the Ferg being closed on weekends freaked me out on my visit. </p>
<p>There are so many kids like mine - OOS and no money for a trip with friends - that I know are on campus for long weekends. I wish there was a place for the kids to gather. I know some places are open, it just is that there in no 1 student centric gathering.</p>
<p>The residence halls do not close over Thanksgiving break, so there will likely still be some kind of Bama Dining something over Thanksgiving. I’m not sure that the program stopped, but maybe hasn’t received media coverage since that article.</p>