I hate apartment-suite style dorms for freshmen. I think.

Back in my college dorm days, everyone propped open their doors most of the day and other people just stopped in to say hi. Now most dorms require doors to be closed at all times. I understand it is for safety (both personal and belongings) but it definitely doesn’t allow for the easy camaraderie.

A grad student at UMich told me she loves her relatively new dorm. Six separate bedrooms, each with a bath, and then shared space.

When they redid 3 of the Houses at Caltech in 2006, they added many more singles. Even in the old Houses, there were private bathrooms as well as group ones. Having lounges and large kitchens, study rooms with computers, lend themselves to socializing.

I hadn’t thought of the security angle and locking a single bedroom.

D likes her old school dorm. I think her entire floor is only 7-8 rooms and they have a really nice common room, which is well used. Common bathroom but spacious and privacy for showers and all. Her main friend group is her floor. Door to hall is left open a lot, if they are in the room.

My D lived in a suite-style dorm. Her suite consisted of 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large living/dining area and a kitchenette (apartment size refrigerator, sink and microwave, but no stove) shared by 4 girls. She liked having the privacy/security of her own room and sharing a bathroom with only one other girl. Cleaning the bathroom and keeping the common areas clean wasn’t a huge issue. She did not meet a lot of people in her dorm (she was a freshman and many in that particular dorm were upperclassmen), but it didn’t matter because she made all the friends and acquaintances she wanted outside of the dorm.

She did a special program for freshmen that started the week before school started and met lots of fellow freshmen that way. She met other people through the kids she knew from the program. She met people in some of her classes, in groups she was involved in and through intramural sports. She has continued to meet people right into senior year. After two years in the suite-style dorm, she chose to live in a 1 BR off-campus apartment where there is no social interaction other than with people she already knew.

FWIW, my D was pretty shy and quiet when she started college, and she still managed to make friends even without the communal bathroom experience. She might have met more freshmen in a traditional dorm, but she might also have had roommate issues with sharing a small space, sexiling, difficulty studying in her room, etc. I know kids who had fabulous experiences in a traditional dorm, and others who had nightmarish experiences. I think there are some students who will do better in one style or the other, and a lot more who would be just fine in either situation.

Both Beth’s mom and mom2 brought up a new word I have never heard of - “sexiling”. For those, like me who never heard of it, it means being exiled from your room because your roommate is having sex. Duh. I know this is a big issue… my niece’s roommate made her sleep elsewhere for many nights her first semester her freshman year because the previously sheltered roommate was having lots of fun. It actually was one of the reason my niece changed colleges mid-semester so it is a big deal. Thanks you two for teaching me a new word and bringing up another reason why a single room can be a good thing.

^
I was aware of this happening at my college back in the late 70’s. We just didn’t have a word for it.

I only hate them because my college didn’t have them. Oh boy, did I hate sharing a room with a stranger. The only things worse were sharing a room with a friend only to have it destroy the friendship and having to walk down the hall to shower and go to the bathroom. Oh, and my dorms had horrible shower set ups so maintaining a shred of modesty while getting into and out of the shower required ridiculous contortions. Showering itself wasn’t much better. When I think about what I would have given for the privacy of my own room and even better, a decent amount of privacy for the bathroom…

Like m2ck I do like the hybrid option better. I don’t think sharing a room in and of itself is the problem; it’s the closed-off nature of suites and the reduced number of people sharing common areas. But if you have a 10-bedroom suite sharing common areas, that works. Or I’ve seen situations where there are 4 single rooms clustered around a bathroom and then 2-4 of those clusters situated around a kitchen and common area, so there are like 8-16 young people sharing a space. My undergrad dorm has a modified version of corridor style - there were about 4-5 rooms on each corridor sharing a bathroom and a kitchenette (so 8-10 people), but there were 3-4 of those corridors arranged close to each other surrounding a large open area. So you became really close with the people on your corridor but also got to know people on your pod area.

That said, I’ve known freshman in corridor style set ups that were sad and lonely and I’ve known freshman in suites and apartments who seemed to know everyone. Part of this does rely on the disposition of the student in question.

My thought is straight forward. Do not like certain dorm to the point that you believe it may impact your experiences negatively, then choose a different college. There are plenty to choose from based on your personal criteria. If the dorm style happen to be at the top of the criteria list, than you better take it seriously. My D. had something like a pretty campus as one of the very important criteria. She ended up attending at the college that had a very pretty campus. Whatever makes you happy! Keep in mind that happy student will produce the happy results, misery is not a good place for a college student, will not work!

With the housing built over the last decade, UVa went back to old hallway style of first year housing. They had built suite housing during the 1970s to 1990s, and many students said they liked the old 1950s hall-style housing better for social interaction. UVa tore down the circa 1970 suite housing and is spending $100 million renovating the 1953 hallway housing.

Some of the least popular first year housing at UVa is a 1984 complex full of single rooms and small windows.