Housing

<p>First things first. Congrats to all the ed admits and heartfelt sympathies to those that were deferred or denied. Also, it appears that Interesteddad was again correct with regards to megblum and moongirl and that's wonderful. I also offer my sincerest apologies to moongirl if I offended her with my improper characterization of her SAT scores. Her scores still place her around the 94th percentile throughout the country. </p>

<p>Next, does anyone know how roommates are selected and paired together?</p>

<p>BlacknBlue,
You will get a fairly comprehensive form to fill out inquiring about things like your sleep and study habits, smoker/non-smoker etc. Then, the Swat "housing guru" will sit down with all the housing forms and do a good job of matching up compatible people. They have done a very good job in the past.</p>

<p>Roommate selection is done based on questionnaire that is sent to all matriculating students. Some roommates become best friends, and stay together all four years. Most get along just fine. Some are better off splitting up after first semester.</p>

<p>All enrolled freshmen send in a housing questionairre that has check-boxes for several dozen preferences: coed/single sex, smoking/non, etc. The categories are interesting and comprehensive. There is also a space for comments. So for example, if you didn't want to live in Mary Lyons, you could write "Star Trek gives me the hives" or if you did want to live in Mary Lyons, you could write, "Pterodactyls Rock!". Or, you could simply offer a first choice dorm.</p>

<p>The Director of Student Housing takes all the forms home and starts piling them up on the kitchen table. Over the course of several weeks, the forms start migrating to different piles. First, they are separated into "big-stuff" piles, like smoking dorm versus non-smoking, coed dorm versus single-sex dorm. Then the big piles get broken down into smaller piles: like students who have expressed a preference for a quiet room versus a more social room, slob versus neatnik, early risers vs night owls, students who have expressed a strong preference for diversity, or an interest in politics, or an interest in gay issues, etc. From those smaller piles, they simply do the best job they can matching up compatible roommates.</p>

<p>It's a pretty personalized process and they try as much as possible to give everyone what they want. The system works pretty well, except when students aren't honest in their questionnaire answers. At the end of the day, some roommates get along great and others don't.</p>

<p>Well, that was easy, thank you for all your responses.</p>

<p>don't worry blacknblue, i wasn't offended at all. </p>

<p>I think I stayed in the Hallowell dorms during discovery weekend. Pretty nice, comfy and cozy. I wished I had checked out some of the other dorms though to get a feel for them. Oh well.</p>

<p>It's really important to be honest in your housing questionnaire, if you try and fish for a certain type of room mate it can go really wrong. Generally the Dean does a pretty good job of matching up room mates, every year there are some who become great friends, and the majority have pretty good relationships. There are a number of roommates who split up during freshman year, but that is pretty uncommon. Also, I’ve noticed that the majority of freshman roommates don’t live together again sophomore year, even if they get along pretty well. In terms of dorms, if you want to live on a single sex hall you automatically end up in Parrish. As Interesteddad indicated it is also pretty easy to get into Mary Lyons, as long as you make it clear that’s where you want to live. However I would recommend being pretty sure about ML before you really push for it, because if you don’t really like it then you are stuck way of campus and away from all the other dorms and freshman. Other than that I think its pretty much a toss up as to where they put you. As a freshman you can live in Willets, Mertz, Dana/Hallowell, Wharton or Alice Paul (New Dorm). This may change, but it seems unlikely. The past two years have seen Mertz as being the biggest freshman dorm, with a big portion of the class and small numbers of upperclassmen, and it’s a pretty nice place to live. Willets also has a lot of freshman, but also a lot of Sophomores and a couple of juniors/seniors. Willets is a pretty social place, but isn’t as nice a facility as Mertz, Wharton or Alice Paul. Danawell is slightly more upperclassman oriented, with juniors and seniors, and is a little quieter. The building itself isn’t very conducive to socializing, and the bathrooms are pretty terrible. Wharton probably has the least number of freshman, and only one or two sophomore rooms. The facilities are really nice, and it is pretty quite and calm, though I think the A/B wing is much more freshman oriented than the other two. I don’t really know much about Alice Paul, all though I have been told that this year it has the strongest sense of community for the freshman and that “they all love each other and do stuff like play board games”. With the exception of ML all the dorms are pretty centrally located, and it’s pretty easy to go hang out in a different dorm. Also, smoking/non-smoking is done by HALL not by dorm, and there are smoking halls in pretty much every dorm.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Also, smoking/non-smoking is done by HALL not by dorm, and there are smoking halls in pretty much every dorm.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Not officially.</p>

<p>Here's the complete list of dorm rooms at Swat for this year:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/housing/lottery/roomlist04-05.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/housing/lottery/roomlist04-05.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The only building that has smoking and non-smoking halls is Wharton. Hallowell is all smoking. Those are the only two dorms available to freshmen this year where smoking is officially allowed.</p>

<p>Parrish, Dana, Mertz, Willets, Alice Paul, and ML are all officially non-smoking dorms in their entirety (which is not to say that college students have never been known to break the rules!)</p>

<p>Basically, any 09er who requested a smoking room should have been assigned to either Hallowell or Wharton East 3rd floor. And, anyone requesting a strong non-smoking preference should not have been assigned to those two places. These designations change from time to time as the demand for smoking rooms continues to decline.</p>

<p>For the 10'ers looking at the link above, freshmen rooms are marked with an (N) following the room number.</p>

<p>Yeah, you're right about both the location of smoking halls (there are also a lot more in dorms where there are no freshman), and that people don't always obey the rules. That said though I did live on a smoking hall my freshman year and most people simply went outside when they wanted a cigarette. I would also make very sure that you are very, very specific and clear about detailing any allergies or conditions you may have, not only in regards to smoking, but some buildings have been known to cause peoples allergies to act up.</p>

<p>SwatStudent08: Whaddya think? It's kind of hard to say that any dorm for first-year students is better or worse than the others. They all have their pluses and minuses. </p>

<p>Plus, odds are that everyone will end up living in four different dorms over four years anyway. The housing system is incredibly fair.</p>

<p>Yeah, it also depends allot on the people living around you. As facilities though I think that Danawell and Willets are the two worst. I know Wharton and Mertz are pretty nice, and I think Alice Paul is also. I don't really know anything about ML. I also dislike Parrish as a building, it might even be the worst, but if you want a single sex hall it is probably worth it. Again though, it really depends on the people that you’re living with/around.</p>

<p>From reading this thread, the dorms sound very good compared to most other campuses we've visited. My parents and I actually took a tour at Swat in October, and our guide showed us his room. I can't remember which one it was (to the right of Parrish I think?) but his dorm was in the basement....made me feel a little claustraphobic; I probably would NOT want to live down there if I attended Swarthmore o_O</p>

<p>Perhaps this was mentioned somewhere but...if you request single-sex and you're female, you could get either Parrish or Dana 3rd (the only all-male halls are in Parrish west, however.)</p>

<p>And requesting things (or not requesting them) doesn't always work...I know several freshmen in ML who specifically said "please, not ML" on their forms...granted, they love living there and want to stay there next year (so it's probably a good idea to just let the housing powers that be take their course.) And at least several of the girls on my hall (Parrish) didn't say anything about wanting single sex housing on their forms...again, they like how things have turned out, at least as far as they let on.</p>