<p>
[quote]
Each Yale College student is a member of one of the twelve residential colleges. Freshmen live in Silliman College, Timothy Dwight College, or in one of the eight dormitories on the Old Campus. Students live with other freshmen of the residential college to which they have been assigned.
<p>If I'm reading this right, you don't get to live in your residential college during freshman year (unless you're assigned to Silliman or TD)? For example, if you're assigned to, say, Jonathan Edwards, you won't live in the Jonathan Edwards building freshman year?</p>
<p>All freshman of a given residential college live together in a residence on Old Campus; for example, all Jonathan Edwards freshman live in Farnam hall. The Jonathan Edwards residential college houses JE sophomores-seniors. Even though you as a freshman are not living in the same building as upperclassmen, you still have a lot of access to your residential college and will spend a good amount of time there. Silliman and TD students will live in their college all four years.
I actually think this system works very well. This way, you get to meet a lot of the people in your class during freshman year because you’re all in one centralized location.</p>
<p>The person before me explained it perfectly. Even though I don’t live in Trumbull, I’ve pretty much gotten to know all of the Trumbull freshman since we’re all housed in Bingham. And you still spend a lot of time in your RC. I usually eat dinner at Trumbull and study in the TrumButt and Library.</p>
<p>I actually like living on Old Campus since I still get access to my residential college’s facilities (it’s like a 1 minute walk) and can interact with all my college’s freshmen, but I’m also like a 10 second walk from my friends’ suite, even though they’re in a different college.</p>
<p>Also, are you matched with people with similar interests/sleeping patterns, or is it 100% random (I know they emphasize how they don’t take into account majors/sports participation etc)? I tried to access the housing form to see what kind of questions are asked, but you need a NetID.</p>
<p>You will be randomly placed into one of the twelve residential colleges. From there, the information on your housing form is used to put you in a suite with people with similar sleeping patterns and interests. Some suites are definitely more successful than others, but as a whole, people seem pretty happy with their suitemates. And in the off-chance that you are unhappy with your suitemates, the residence halls are very social and you can probably spend most of your hangout time in a suite that you gel with a little better. Also, following freshman year, you get to choose who you suite with. After freshman year, you also have the option of transferring residential colleges if you for some reason dislike your original assignment (this is relatively rare and generally discouraged though.)</p>
<p>This sounds pretty similar to Harvard’s house system. </p>
<p>To clarify, Yale randomly assigns people to be roommates/suitemates freshman year, and during sophomore to senior year, you get to choose who you room with (provided that they are in the same residential college as you)?</p>
<p>From what I understand, you receive a housing form with a series of questions regarding general living habits, and they do as best as they can from that point to place you with other students who are relatively similar. I could be wrong though.</p>
<p>^Correct
The only thing random is what residential college you get put in. Your suite is not random; it is based on your housing form and efforts are made to put you with people you will like.</p>
<p>Lucky: you don’t get to request a sgl or double. That’s random.</p>
<p>Nikkor: the immense difference btn Yale and Harvard is that Yale frosh are assigned a residential college AS A FRESHMAN and you immediately get pulled into that community. At Harvard, groups form as freshmen and then, they seek entrance into one of the houses as sophomores. This to me, is a serious flaw because it allows the individuals to form cliques – Houses tend to attract similar types of students. Yale’s randomization really atomizes many of the social cliqueishness (is this a word?) and your fellow collegians are truly a microcosm of the entire student body. My group of friends was uniformly un-uniform – which we loved. I don’t think this can be easily said of Sophomores at Harvard.</p>
<p>“Random” is a slight oversimplification. The goal is that each residential college be a microcosm of the Yale community as a whole; they make sure that there are (proportionately) the same number of athletes, singers, psychology majors, engineers, etc. in each college.</p>
<p>The housing form is very, very simple, but if I remember correctly, they do ask you what genres of music you like and what genres of music you would prefer your roommate/suitemate didn’t listen to (i.e. death metal or techno or whatever you find annoying) haha.</p>