<p>How is it to live a Caltech. Do you choose what house you enter or are you randomly placed in one? Do you room with other people or are there single rooms? If there is anything else you know about the housing at Caltech, please add. Also I am curious why Avery House looks so much better than some of the others. I know that Avery had been built more recently, and from looking at Avery House's webpages, it seems like a beautiful place. How come other houses don't look quite as good? I have one picture here: Blacker</a> Hovse - DSCN3300.JPG Thank you!</p>
<p>the south houses have singles and doubles (and some triples). the north houses only have doubles. the house you enter is determined by a complicated process called rotation, where you get to know the houses over the course of a week, and then you pick the houses you like best and the houses pick the frosh they like best. you can read a lot about this on wikipedia =></p>
<p>House</a> System at the California Institute of Technology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>also, avery has to look "neater" than a lot of the houses (partially) because some faculty and grad students live there too. avery is kind of a special case.</p>
<p>laplace is right, Avery has faculty and even some kids living in it. In addition to being built more recently, Avery became a house only a few years ago: before that, it was sort of the "quiet dorm" where students could choose to stay if they preferred not to live in a house. So there's less accumulated structural damage from wild parties ;)</p>
<p>The picture you linked is out of date. It's from before the renovations, when Blacker still had a tree and treehouse in their courtyard. However, random junk does tends to accumulate in the courtyards of most houses. Personally I think that's part of the fun, even if it looks ugly. </p>
<p>Everywhere I've lived on campus has been very satisfactory. I live in a South House, and I've only had singles when living in it (when the house wasn't under construction, that is). The rooms are large compared to most schools, and many doubles in the North Houses have lofts, giving you extra floor space. The South Houses have excellent built-in cabinets, drawers, closets, and each room has its own sink.The heat and air conditioning function well (South Houses have built-in A/C; North House rooms don't, but often have window units instead). Showers and restrooms are unisex in my house, but no one will come in there if they hear the shower running, and there are locks and solid partitions for each shower/toilet stall, so you will probably not feel uncomfortable. Internet speed is excellent, service is reliable, and we have wireless most everywhere on campus. Cell phone service in the South Houses can be spotty (try Sprint). Color printing on the house printer is free. Each house has a computer lab. Maids clean your room once per term, and clean the house throughout the workweek. Common kitchens with all of the amenities (inc. dishwasher and shared utensils) are provided (several full kitchens and kitchenettes per house). Houses have their own lounges (usually with TV, couches, somebody's gamecube, sound system, pool or foosball tables, etc.) and their own dining room. Laundry machines are available within the building, and you can pay by swiping a card or with quarters. You can have a cat or a caged pet if you're clever about it.</p>
<p>You may be forced to live outside of your house's main building for about a year. This is because there is generally enough space for three full classes' worth of students to live in each house, but never room for all four. Each house has a system for determining who will stay on campus, which is usually a combination of random chance (e.g., card-picking), your class rank (e.g., all seniors and freshmen are in, and 66% of the remaining spots go to juniors), and whether you provide some kind of service to the house (presidents, treasurers and trained first aid providers might be guaranteed a spot).</p>
<p>If you can't stay in the main building, you are still guaranteed a space in some other kind of Caltech housing, most of which is within a block from campus and some of which is even on campus. You can pick an "off-campus" room with a group of friends, so you will not be randomly assigned roommates. During the year or so I lived off-campus, I lived in a quad with other students from my house. It had two bedrooms, two baths, a full kitchen, a giant living/dining area, and a heated swimming pool. Some houses also have an off-campus building associated with them: usually this is a converted single-family home that houses five or so people. Groups of students can choose to live there together.</p>
<p>If you live off campus, you can choose not to be on the board plan. It is very hard to get off the board plan under any other circumstances (Caltech will prepare you individual meals to meet any dietary restriction, so you can't try to use that as an excuse), but the food is pretty good in my opinion. Dinners are sit-down and are served by waiters in your house dining hall. For lunch, you get plenty of credit ($450 worth) to buy meals at cafes or cafeterias around campus, with options like Mongolian bowls, pizzas, deli sandwiches, panini, hamburgers/hot dogs, salad bars, mexican food, &c. Credit can also be spent at any other time of the day for that matter. You can also spend your credit on some cooking supplies, snacks, and office supplies available at a convenience store within three minutes of the houses. During the afternoons, the cafeterias open up and you can get free soda/milk/juice/coffee from the machines, as well as a small selection of free sandwich ingredients, fruit, breakfast cereal, ice cream, and vegetables. On weekends, you're on your own.</p>
<p>As an Avery member, I'll just add to what was said before and say that Avery was the most recently constructed of the Houses. Also, the other Houses aren't half bad to live in either, although my impression of that is only from time spent there, not time spent living there. The difference is not significant.</p>
<p>Once you get here, you'll care a lot more about the house personalities than the house appearances. You'll see.</p>