Housing

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
1

<p>HOUSING PROCEDURE</p>

<p>Early March brings Super Deadline Day, or the day by which you must decide what you’re going to do about housing next year. In certain circumstances, decisions made on this day can be reversed later, but the expectation is that you’ll stay with what you choose.</p>

<p>So, in the mean time, you have a couple of options.</p>

<ol>
<li>Enter the housing lottery. You do not (cannot, actually) need to submit your application on Super Deadline Day; that doesn’t happen until April. More about that later.</li>
<li>Rush a frat/sorority or join a program house.</li>
<li>Apply to be an RPL.</li>
<li><p>Live off-campus (not an option anyway because the deadline was two months ago, but it’s something to think about in the future).</p></li>
<li><p>Housing Lottery.
You enter the lottery either by yourself or in a group ranging from 2-12 people. You decide who and how many go in your group. At some point, ResLife will put a link on their site (reslife.brown.edu) to the lottery application where you’ll enter the names of everyone in your group.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>As you’ve probably gleaned from the numerous housing threads on CC, Brown has a strange lottery system that arguably has both its drawbacks and merits. FWIW, the system itself is pretty simple. Each person who enters the lottery is assigned a “priority number” by semester level (so Semester 3 numbers are the worst/lowest and 9+ the best/highest). All the numbers in your group are averaged together, and you get a group number! Then you go to the lottery, and numbers are called in order where you pick your room/rooms (your group doesn’t have to share a room/suite/rooms on a hall––you just pick at the same time).</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Rush happens in February. There are lots of options, and most houses put programs in your boxes or around campus. Check them out.</p></li>
<li><p>Apply to be an RPL (RC, WPC, MPC, CA)! It’s fun. Check the ResLife site for more information.</p></li>
<li><p>See above.</p></li>
</ol>

2

<p>HOUSING OPTIONS</p>

<p>Disclaimer: I haven’t lived in most of the buildings or even spent a significant amount of time in some of them. Feel free to add your own comments or correct me.</p>

<p>There are LOTS of options for housing. I would recommend checking out friends’ dorms or going on the dorm tours offered by ResLife in early April to get a good look.</p>

<p>FRESHMAN DORMS. Some dorms are freshman-only, so you won’t get put there (Perkins, Littlefield), but virtually every other freshman dorm has space for upperclassmen. Depending on the place, you could get a single, double, triple, or quad, or even another configuration. Morriss has suites on the end. Keeney has guarded secrets, including fabulous suites and beautifully-windowed rooms.</p>

<p>PEMBROKE CAMPUS
Miller: East of Andrews, Miller has a mix of doubles and singles (and apparently, a handful of triples). One floor is reserved for grad students, but you’ll get a whole range of years in the building. It’s old but pleasant, with some scary glass stairs, bright hallways, and semi-balconies.</p>

<p>Metcalf: Across the way (West of Andrews!), Metcalf is entirely singles. Very nice rooms, a fantastic lounge. Mostly juniors and seniors.</p>

<p>111 Brown Street: This is actually a house. It’s a cool place to live. All doubles, though (13 people, including the CA).</p>

<p>Plantations: Brown’s best-kept secret. Huge rooms, lots of semi-private bathrooms, kitchen, living room with a piano that’s almost in tune, and hardwood floors aplenty. About 17 people, mostly doubles.</p>

<p>NP1/NP2: the same idea as NP3 and NP4.</p>

<p>MAIN CAMPUS
Caswell: the Andrews of sophomore-only housing, Caswell comprises three towers of beautiful, light-drenched rooms with (sealed) fireplaces and walk-in closets. There are four rooms (all doubles) to a floor (plus a shared bathroom), so it’s comfortable. The basement kitchen and lounge was recently renovated, making the lower level a good place to hang out. The building is old but graceful (plus everything was redone inside quite recently), and the fourth floor has hardwood floors.</p>

<p>Hegeman: Hegeman consists of five “towers,” forming an awkward L next to Caswell. The building, save one of the aforementioned towers, consists of single-gender suites. Each suite contains three tiny singles around an unfurnished common room, making socialization possible! There are two suites per floor. Like many other dorms on campus, the building is old but nice enough inside that people seem to enjoy it.</p>

<p>Minden: I know absolutely nothing about this building, other than that it has eight floors, a (working) elevator, and a stovetop-less kitchen. It also used to be a hotel and later a JWS dormitory.</p>

<p>Slater: on the Main Green! Free tickets to Spring Weekend! High ceilings and windows, with some singles and doubles. I don’t know too much about the building, so you should probably go see it yourself. Home mostly to juniors and seniors.</p>

<p>SOUTH CAMPUS/WRISTON-PATRIOT’S COURT
Grad Center: the infamous barracks of the sophomore class (and some juniors), Grad Center was built riot-proof, and it’s easy to see why. Despite its reputation and external appearance, it’s not a bad place to be. Home to some of the largest singles on campus, Grad Center is composed entirely of suites––four per floor, five to six floors per tower (four towers). Each suite has four-six single rooms and a bathroom centered around a common hallway. Grad Center also plays host to strange but useful architecture: a large patio connects the upper floors of several buildings, a twisting staircase leads past a locked lounge, and a courtyard sits between the southern towers, with rock “statues” and stepping stones to guide the way. Oh, and the largest satellite gym is in the middle of the complex.</p>

<p>New Dorm: The first floor of New Dorm contains a conference suite, a reception area, and Jo’s. The next three floors are housing, and the top two floors is a hotel. Then there’s another building with a similar idea, but no Jo’s, and no hotel. The whole thing is about 20 years old, making it our newest (and probably nicest) dorm. The 2nd and 3rd floors are largely suites (four or so tiny singles around a furnished common room, and the 4th floor has a combination of suites, singles, and doubles. New Dorm (non-suite) singles are gigantic. Also, bathrooms are on the hallway, not in the suites.</p>

<p>Wriston and Patriot’s Court: home to most of the frat-program houses. The buildings are very similar inside, especially if you live in the parts not dominated by frat houses. Non-members living in a frat/program house building (there are usually two houses per building) are called “independents.” Be mindful of the rooms designated for the houses (typically lounges and kitchens); you will not have a key, and you will need to make sure you can find the kitchen available for your use. Rooms are pretty large; mostly singles and doubles. All gender-neutral, and Diman and Harkness are sophomore-only. The fourth floors of most buildings have lovely suites with a common area and a number of singles and doubles.</p>

<p>EAST CAMPUS:
Barbour/Barbour Apartments: Barbour Hall is a sophomore-only dorm with giant rooms and private bathrooms. Good place to live. The apartments, inhabited by all years, typically have a kitchen, a living room, and some number of bedrooms. The building is arranged in something of a rectangular doughnut, with a courtyard in the center and a big lounge to one side.</p>

<p>Young O: also know nothing about this place. Do fill me in.</p>

<p>King House: a program house, but with plenty of independents. Also an actual house. Huge rooms, pretty awesome.</p>

<p>I’ve probably forgotten some places…</p>

3

<p>[Brown</a> University Housing Lottery](<a href=“Residential Life | Brown University”>Residential Life | Brown University) and the various pages linked from there contain a bunch of tools that are helpful for your lottery needs. Research and planning will help you get through the housing lottery with as little stress as possible. And a little bit of luck. Backup plans, backup plans, backup plans. My housing group basically had a flowchart of what to do, with room numbers and everything ready, and that’s fairly normal from what I’ve seen.</p>

4

<p>Here’s an updated version of TheFunnyThing’s previous first-year housing thread. Original found here:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/962275-food-housing-2.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/962275-food-housing-2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>MAIN CAMPUS/EAST CAMPUS</p>

<p>Keeney: Whatever you’ve heard about Keeney, don’t let the moniker “The Freshman Zoo” frighten you. Although Keeney is supposedly a wild moshpit of 600 freshman crammed into cramped living quarters, it’s actually not that bad. Lots of halls become really close, and many of them end up living together in subsequent years. Keeney can be fairly tame, and the rooms are quite spacious. It’s a really good way to meet people, too, because there are many fellow freshmen around.
Keeney is divided into different houses: Archibald, Bronson, Everett, Jameson, Poland, and Mead. However, they are all in the same building and people tend just to say they live in Keeney, without specifying which specific dorm. Bathrooms are communal.</p>

<p>Perkins: Perkins is famously close-knit, and some varying percentage of former Perkinites end up marrying each other, or so the legend goes. Why? Well, the dorm is considered to be “far” for the Brown campus…a few blocks away from the Main Green! It’s also large enough (~180 freshmen) that a sizeable community forms. Everyone I know who lived in Perkins loved it, despite the distance and the small (and not great) rooms, and they still spent plenty of times on Main Campus with other friends. Also, Perkins has an awesome lounge with flat screen TVs. Perkins is also a great place to live if you’re interested in music (you’re right next to the practice rooms and Orwig, the music building) or engineering (you’re close to B&H, where most engineering classes are held).</p>

<p>Littlefield: Also small and close-knit, located on Lincoln Field. High ceilings and the biggest rooms and closets of all freshman dorms. Bathrooms are communal. Littlefield also has a nice kitchen. Littlefield people tend to get really close.</p>

<p>Hope: Littlefield’s cousin, situated across the Main Green, right next to Faunce. It’s also the oldest dorm on campus and has pretty big rooms. Absolutely prime location for getting places. Like Littlefield, Hope residents tend to bond a lot. Bathrooms are communal.</p>

<p>Wayland: excellent location, decently-sized rooms. Wayland is small, and it’s divided into two halves, North and South Wayland, separated by Wayland arch (one room over the arch has access to the cupola!). ResLife is on the first floor, and upperclassmen are sprinkled throughout the house. Bathrooms are communal. One downside is that Wayland’s located right on Wriston Quad (where the frats are), so it tends to get noisy on Friday/Saturday nights.</p>

<p>PEMBROKE</p>

<p>Andrews: Andrews is really nice. Huge rooms, a giant terrace, a lovely central area with a reading room, a gorgeous “media room” (lounge) etc. And the back garden is just as beautiful. Also, the rooms have sinks. Some of the corner rooms are “suites” (two doubles and a hallway behind a door). Andrews is a fairly large dorm: mostly freshmen but with a substantial upperclass population in the center wing. Bathrooms are communal. You can also control your own heat, which is a plus.</p>

<p>EmWool/MoChamp: really “Emery-Woolley” and “Morriss-Champlin.” Built in the 60s, these four dorms are a tamer version of Keeney, housing about 300 freshmen and a handful of upperclassmen. The rooms are sizable, with large wooden wardrobes in lieu of closets and large windows. Some have balconies. The VDub is in the basement of EmWool, along with a nice gym, and MoChamp’s first floor plays host to MoChamp Lounge, a popular meeting place for student groups. Emery and Woolley are essentially one building with an arbitrary change at the end of a hallway on each floor. Same goes for MoChamp. However, since the buildings are really one massive structure, you can access everything through the basement (or “Lower Level,” which isn’t actually the basement). MoChamp and EmWool aren’t the prettiest of dorms (your walls are cinder blocks), but they’re a great basic place to live. Floors are linoleum. MoChampEmWool bathrooms are private - you’ll share a single bathroom (sink, toilet, shower) with up to two other doubles.</p>

<p>New Pembroke: New Pembroke is a set of four buildings centered around a courtyard. Reflecting Brown’s concerns in the 1970s, they are riot-proof (narrow, twisting hallways). This feature has given the dorms a reputation for being antisocial, one that isn’t true at all. The rooms, however, are decently-sized, with large windows. The dorms are fairly small (NP3 is about 60 and NP4 about 80), with mostly freshmen. NP4 also sports a huge balcony, which was prime for sledding in the winter. NP1 and NP2 are upperclassmen only. NP was renovated in summer 2010, and now has very nice bathrooms, with sinks available in the halls and private tub/toilet rooms.</p>

<p>USEFUL LINKS
Map of residence halls: [Residential</a> Life: Residence Hall Map](<a href=“http://reslife.brown.edu/residence_halls/map.html]Residential”>http://reslife.brown.edu/residence_halls/map.html)
Floorplans (only available with Brown ID) [Test</a> Page for the SSL/TLS-aware Apache Installation on Web Site](<a href=“http://reslife.brown.edu/current_students/lottery/floorplans/floorplans.html]Test”>http://reslife.brown.edu/current_students/lottery/floorplans/floorplans.html)</p>

5

<p>I was wondering, do you need to decide what frat you are going to pledge/if you are going to pledge a frat by early March then?</p>

6

<p>Hannah: yes. Frat/sorority rush starts in early February and you will have pledged by the housing deadline. Information here:
[Residential</a> Life: Lottery - Home](<a href=“http://reslife.brown.edu/current_students/lottery/index.html]Residential”>http://reslife.brown.edu/current_students/lottery/index.html)</p>

7

<p>I wish Brown had a residential college system. I really like that style. </p>

<p>What are Brown’s best and worst residence halls? </p>

<p>I know this question has been asked a lot, but I’m just curious.</p>

8

<p>Chelsea–– “best” and “worst” are relative, especially because Brown’s housing varies considerably in style. Some people love Grad Center, but others say it looks like a concrete prison. A friend of mine, who lives in the coveted New Dorm, called the place “sterile.”</p>

<p>A lot of people go for Andrews (upperclassmen can get singles), New Dorm, Young O, Metcalf/Miller, and Wriston 4th floor suites. There are nice rooms in most buildings, and 8th floor Minden rooms are often snapped up early.</p>

<p>Until this year, New Pembroke was considered undesirable because it’s rundown and oddly shaped. Recent renovations have changed that, though, and now people may be more inclined to choose rooms from the buildings.</p>

<p>I see value in residential college systems, but I also like that Brown’s housing allows you to live with any group of friends each year. Housing options are more restricted within residential college schools, simply because you can’t live with friends who aren’t part of your college. At Brown, you can live with whomever you want.</p>

<p>Also, forgot to put this in my original post: THERE IS A SUITE FEE. Wriston suites, Barbour Hall apartments, Morriss suites, New Dorm suites, Young O, and a handful of other places around campus require each resident to pay $1100 extra to live there. You’ll get more information about which rooms are costlier as the lottery approaches.</p>

<p>Grad Center (with the exception of a few rooms) and Hegeman are exempt because they are not furnished.</p>

9

<p>thefunnything: That is nice that you can live with friends. I think East Andrews Hall and Littlefield Hall look really nice.</p>

<p>From my understanding, the housing lottery allows you to pick where you live, right?</p>

<p>One thing that I’ve been wondering is how great the bathrooms are. Are they clean? Is anyone able to get a private bathroom or are students only able to get a semi-private bathroom?</p>

10

<p>Yes, the housing lottery lets you pick where you live. There are some buildings designated sophomore-only, and there are some issues with the system, but you get options if you have a decent number for your year.</p>

<p>Bathroom cleanliness depends on where you live. Any dorm with hallway bathrooms will be maintained by the custodial staff, but, unfortunately, residents can mess them up a lot. So yes, they will be cleaned, but they will not necessarily stay clean. This tends to be an issue in Keeney.</p>

<p>Most dorms on Pembroke feature semi-private bathrooms, meaning that only a handful of people (3-5) will share a bathroom. Those tend to be quite nice inside. Those clusters exist in other dorms around campus, too.</p>

<p>Many suites feature in-suite bathrooms that are as nice as you’d like them to be––residents are responsible for cleaning them themselves.</p>

11

<p>Chelsea: just to add on to thefunnything on bathrooms, I’ll give you an idea of my situation (and the situation in all of MoChampEmWool). My roommate and I share a bathroom with the single next to us (a male junior), as well as two other freshman girls down the hall. You go in, lock the door, and have a sink, a mirror, a toilet, a shower, and a few towel rods. The bathroom gets cleaned by Rose, the custodian for our dorm, at least twice a week - I would say more than that. We’re responsible for hand soap - all she does is mop the floor and make sure everything’s working. We also chose to chip in to get a bathroom mat for the floor and we share hand towels.</p>

12

<p>Does anyone know how much the housing costs for living in a frat or sorority in relation to a normal dorm? Is it a lot more?</p>

13

<p>The same. 10 char</p>

14

<p>Thank you!!</p>

15

<p>Housing costs are the same, but program houses/frats/sororities make you pay dues, which can get quite pricey depending on where you’re living. They’ll give you all the information at Rush.</p>

16

<p>thefunnything: That’s nice. I really like that feature. Brown is probably one of the only university that has the housing lottery.</p>

<p>I would rather share a bathroom with only 3-5 people instead of 15 or so.</p>

17

<p>bruno14: Are most of the bathrooms co-ed? I know I’d get used to it, but sharing a bathroom with a guy seems weird. </p>

<p>Would I have to live on a single-sex floor to share a bathroom with just girls?</p>

18

<p>Chelsea: you would probably have to live on a single-sex floor to share a bathroom with just girls. Honestly, though, I think you could deal with a situation like mine. The only way in which you’re “sharing” a bathroom with a guy is that you use the same facilities - it’s just one room with a locking door. No different from sharing a bathroom with your brother/dad at home, as long as the guys remember to keep the toilet seat down :)</p>

<p>Also, some floors with non-private bathrooms choose to designate one for girls and one for guys, rather than having both be co-ed. I think this is true in some areas of Keeney, etc.</p>

19

<p>Chelsea: Just to be clear, the housing lottery being discussed is for sophomores, juniors and seniors. First years (freshmen) have no say where they are living, other than to request substance free housing. </p>

<p>I’m pretty confident in saying that all freshmen housing has its bathrooms cleaned regularly by custodial staff, although good chance some of them might look a little grungy on Sunday mornings.</p>

<p>As for whether bathrooms are co-ed or not – it really depends on where you are living. My daughter had single-sex bathrooms her first two years at Brown. I think co-ed bathrooms are fairly common at many colleges across the country.</p>

<p>Many other schools have housing lotteries. But do other colleges have the first pick contest?</p>

<p>As for “best/worst” dorms – it’s so personal. Some people adore Keeney because it’s full of freshmen and a great way to meet lots of people. But I know students who were miserable there, because it was too noisy and impersonal. I could do that type of comparison for almost every dorm on campus. </p>

<p>Minden: A very quirky place. The rooms and bathrooms need some serious updating. But they are very very big. And odd. Three huge triples that are connected, so you have to walk through one person’s room to get to yours, for example. Every floor has a communal bathroom, but most of the suites have their own bathrooms. Huge lounge, huge kitchen. The kitchen has like four ovens, four refrigerators, five microwaves – but no stove tops.</p>

<p>Young Orchard: Been years since I’ve been inside, but it’s apartments/suites.</p>

<p>I’ve never been inside Slater. That might be the only dorm I’ve never seen. Hmm, actually, haven’t been in Plantations or 111 Brown, either.</p>

20

<p>Slater - is okay, just old, lack of bathrooms.
Plantations - basement is scary. It looks nicer from the outside that is inside, like King House. Huge triple on the third floor with vaulted ceiling, but still a triple. Has couches an stuff, a kitchen.
111 Brown - nothing to write home about, but Brown owns the house next door I think it’s aux. housing. Knew some people living there, it’s like a normal home!
Minden - tiny elevators. If they break down have fun going to the 8th floor. Some 2nd floor people can get out to the roof area I think. Huge lounge.There’s a weird cafe hidden near the lounge behind a locked door that J&W used to use I think. There’s a stove with a huge hood and all that. Fun fact of the day…</p>

<p>It’s probably worth noting that Metcalf, Miller, and all Andrews are really one building. They are also connected to the V-dub through a locked door in the Andrews dining hall. Just another factoid!</p>