I received a (beautiful) acceptance letter and full-tuition scholarship nomination on Monday, and I am beyond excited to join the Trojan family! I have been looking through the dorms/suites available, and I am completely overwhelmed by all of the options. If anyone has any insight, please help! At first, I was drawn to the Fluor suites, because they have A/C, individual bathrooms, and more space then the traditional dorms. I like to cook a lot, so the range top/cooking area would be awesome, and I like that it’s so close to the gym. However, I don’t want to be missing out on the social aspects of Brinkrant, New, or North. Also, I will be making most classes at Dornsife, so does this factor in to the equation, or are they all pretty close? The communal bathrooms/lack of A/C in the dorms scare me, but I want to be able to party, make friends, and be a part of the social scene. Will this be hard in the Fluor Tower? Are there different types of people who room in different places?
Thank you so much for any help! I really appreciate it!
bump
Where you should live really depends on what your priorities are. If you want the traditional, social dorm experience, then I definitely recommend Birnkrant (NOT New/North). BK is very social and people tend to leave their doors open and hang out a lot with the rest of their floor (some of the floors in BK even go to the beach together), and also get to move in two days early! If you’re eligible to live there, I highly recommend it!
Fluor has its perks too, such as bathroom/A/C/kitchenette and you also get a living room, but there you’re essentially living with 7 other people, which might not always work out. Fluor is definitely not as social, but it’s really what you make of it. Also, since Fluor only has kitchenettes, I don’t believe it has an oven, but I’m not 100% sure about that. You also have lounges and laundry rooms on each floor at Fluor (though I don’t know how it is at BK).
I’m a current freshman with a Trustee scholarship, so I was also eligible to live in Birnkrant but I chose Webb, and although I love my room and the AC and the kitchen and the bathroom and the fact that it stays open during the winter break (although pro tip: DON’T stay over winter break), I sometimes really regret missing out on the freshman dorm experience. In Webb and Fluor, it’s more difficult to keep your doors open and it’s less likely that people will just walk up to your door etc. It also just…feels different. I can’t quite explain. I feel like it doesn’t give you that freshman college experience, and since you’ll most probably be living in apartments for the rest of college, you might want to live in a dorm for those 10 months. But that’s just my two cents.
Also, if you’re concerned with Fluor not being social, it’s really what you make of it and I can’t stress this enough. Webb is notoriously antisocial, much more so than Fluor, and although there are floors where virtually no one knows one another, people on my floor do hang out a lot. It entirely depends on the people.
Oh, and since Dornsife has so many buildings, it really doesn’t matter where you live. People have classes in the weirdest places. One of the reasons I chose Webb was that it’s next to the SCA building and I’m a Cinematic Arts major, but I had exactly 0 classes there last semester, so go figure…
You also might want to visit both places during Explore.
Hope this helps!
Thank you so much! That was such a great answer and so helpful. I’m worried about not having enough space (or A/C) in the dorms, but I guess that I will check it out next month during explore. Again, thank you so much!
My son lived in Birnkrant and loved it, for the social reasons described above. No A/C for first month of school was fairly horrid, however. Everyone buys fans!
It is very hot into late October in CA. You will be uncomfortable until November and from April on as well. D was hot the whole time in Birnkrant and made AC a priority over almost everything else after that experience. Being able to sleep was really important for her 