<p>I just want to know more about New Grad, as a place for a firstyear to live. I put South, then Max P as my first two choices, but I'm having trouble deciding a third. When I visited, a few people told me New Grad was really nice, social, etc. But I don't know much about it besides the info on the website.I'm also considering Burton Judson as my third choice, but I don't know.</p>
<p>New Grad is very far away from campus, the dining hall, and the rest of Hyde Park, which is annoying to deal with as a first-year. I can understand wanting to live in other far-away dorms for their amentities (e.g. Stony Island has kitchens, Broadview has private bathrooms), but New Grad has absolutely nothing going for it. BJ is on campus and has everything New Grad has (except maybe air conditioning).</p>
<p>I just want to say something as a first year that lives in New Grad. Something that is very special about the culture of New Grad is that the houses (Henderson, Tufts, and Midway) are extremely tightly knit. Because the houses tend to be a bit smaller (roughly ~ 50 per house), the students are family. We have private bathrooms as well as a full kitchen with industrialized refrigerators, microwaves, and multiple ovens/stoves. The size that the housing office has of the room is incorrect (the floor plan they have is smaller by roughly 5 feet each way and does not take into account the private bathroom). We also have a full gym in our dorm and conference rooms as well as music practice rooms.</p>
<p>The culture at New Grad is pretty great and is different this year than in previous years because the dorm has been converted to an all-undergraduate dorm (i.e. party dorm). </p>
<p>New Grad is a great dorm. The houses are very close-knit and supportive. The students who live there give it high marks.</p>
<p>Bannedhero, I didn’t realize New Grad had private bathrooms, so I concede my point about that. But everything else you list is also in BJ. Many houses in BJ are 40-50 students. There’s no reason to believe that the houses in New Grad are more tightly knit than the houses in BJ. (“Tight-knittedness” is always used to describe dorms with little material appeal. It strangely assumes that houses on campus are somehow more impersonal/fragmented.) BJ also has a full kitchen. Its rooms are bigger. It, too, has a gym, conference rooms, and practice rooms.</p>
<p>While I don’t doubt that you’ve had a good time in New Grad, I still maintain that there’s little reason for an incoming student to actually want to live there over other options.</p>
<p>In response to cellist’s post, New Grad is a great third choice dorm for people considering Max P and South but aren’t sure their deposit date will allow them to get in. Because nearly everyone in New Grad wanted to be in Max or South, the population of New Grad is much more similar to those two than any other dorm on campus. BJ, especially, has a very different population of students than Max or South. If someone is looking for the slightly less traditional UChicago-y feel that Max or South has, New Grad is certainly the best option other than those two, while BJ is not as good of an option in this regard.</p>
<p>In addition to having private bathrooms, a gym (New Grad has a real gym, as opposed to South which “has” a gym in the sense it has a bench), and a nice kitchen, New Grad has the South shuttle stop right in front of it, which means that all the go-to places on campus (like the Reg or Ratner) feel close, as the shuttle runs every 15 minutes after 5 pm. What about before 5pm? The 171 and 172, which run during the day and free for UChicago students, stop next to New Grad, which means they can bring you to the heart of campus very quickly when the South shuttle isn’t running. As well, New Grad is the closest dorm to the 6 (which brings you to downtown, by the Art Institute) other than Broadview. My point is that New Grad, while farther away from campus than BJ and South, has options that can make any point on campus feel close.</p>
<p>SeaLegs, how nice is the New Grad gym? Are there bench and squat racks? </p>
<p>As it stands, there are no free weights in the New Grad gym, but there have been multiple fundraisers this year to help get free weights for the gym. I know they made most of the money they needed a couple months ago, but I don’t know if they will have them for next year.</p>
<p>Yet, the gym is still nice, as far as dorm gyms go. There are 3 treadmills, 3 ellipticals, and 2 stationary bikes. There is lat-pulldown/seated-rows machine, a leg extension/curl machine, a shoulder raise/chest press machine, and a general resistance machine that can be adapted to mimic almost all exercises. As well, the equipment and the gym are pretty new and tidy.</p>
<p>Should this not be satisfactory, you can take the South shuttle, which runs every fifteen minutes, anytime after 5pm directly to Ratner and back to New Grad.</p>