I had a couple questions about Northeastern’s housing that I couldnt find the answers to on their website.
Are the dorms coed by room, floor, or building?
What exactly do you do in a “living learning community”? As I understand it, you automatically get put into the dorm where you living learning community it right? So for example, Im gonna be an engineer, so I will be in Stetson West?
Is there usually one communal bathroom per floor? If someone could answer specifically for Stetson West, that would be great
About how far of a walk is it usually from the freshman dorms to the academic buildings area of campus?
And kind of just a general dorm question, could somebody explain the difference between suite and apartment style living?
Last, how does room selections usually work? Tips and advice?!
Also, if any of these answers are somewhere on college confidential or Northeastern’s website that I just missed, feel free to put the links here.
I’m not a student there but I am accepted and have done research / went to the admitted students days.
Dorms: I think freshman and probably sophomore dorms are coed by floor.
In LLCs you are just roomed with people in the same school as you(business students with other business students)
I think there is usually one communal bathroom. Not sure though. Hopefully someone chimes in.
About the walk, they are pretty well integrated with the classrooms. The classrooms are mainly integrated throughout the center of campus and the dorms aren’t far away. Maybe a 20 minute walk?
I think that is all I can help you with today, but I hope you find out!
Dorms are co-ed by floor or wing usually, depending on the dorm.
LLC’s are placed into different spots each year based on size - some stay in the same place every year, but don’t bank on it. As far as I know, Stetson West has often been the Engineering LLC, but there’s nothing for sure.
The idea of LLC’s is that your RA’s can provide events related to the LLC, but more than that, it’s cool knowing everyone in your LLC shares an interest - it’s a good topic to immediately start from socially, get involved in said topic, and go from there.
Yep, one bathroom per floor for every dorm I believe.
It takes about 5 minutes to get to class from most dorms - max 10.
A suite is connected by a private bathroom but has no kitchen. An apartment has the bathroom, full kitchen, and living room, just like any apartment.
For freshman year, there’s no selection process. After that, you get a lottery number by your class level and pick online at a scheduled time - if you’re rooming with 4 people, the highest lottery number of the four loops the others in. If you plan early and pay attention, everything usually works out well.
I’m sure some of this is around, but finding everything is always a bit of a search - a lot of this information if not all of it is covered by visiting.
PengPhils pretty much covered it. Another part on room selection - there will be a survey to help match up roommates at some point, if you don’t have someone going in that you’d like to room with. Most of my friends did this with no problem.
@PengsPhils and @nanotechnology so freshman year, unless you’ve already met people you want to room with, you fill out the survey, and then the university matches people? You dont view others’s survey answers and pick somebody or something like that?
Nope, all matched up by NEU - frankly, I recommend it over picking a roommate off facebook. Living in an LLC will give you plenty of people around you who are interested in similar things - rooming with someone isn’t about interests but more about habits - a good friend can often be a bad roommate choice.
Somewhere here on CC I read a link to a study that showed that freshmen most likely to request a roommate change after first semester are those who had chosen to room with a high school friend, followed by those who were matched based on common interests. The least likely students to request a roommate change were randomly assigned by the college.
I totally understand what you guys mean, I would just about strangle some of my best friends if I had to see them for more than a week without a break.
@PengsPhils So honors students are ‘stuck’ in the nicest - but ** most expensive ** housing on campus both years? How do they feel about that? Can you elect not to stay with honors housing sophomore year if you want to get a cheaper residence hall?
@suzyQ7 What @nanotechnology said, though I do agree that being unable to elect out of IV for financial reasons isn’t right either - no school is perfect, unfortunately.
@PengsPhils I know it’s early but I have a question about LLC’s. My son is going to be in the College of Engineering but is also very into weightlifting. Is the healthy living LLC for people who work out a lot or is it more for people who are organic and spiritual. It’s hard to tell by the description. And are they mutually exclusive or could he live in a dorm that was Healthy Living Engineers? lol
@jjmama I’m not certain on that one myself. My guess is that you would get a mix of both, probably closer to the organic/spiritual archetype overall but attracting some workout enthusiasts. Unfortunately, it is not possible to combine LLC’s. In general, I would advise to not pick the LLC for your major, for the sake of life/interest diversity. If you have another strong interest, add some balance with an LLC possibly related to it! So, in this case, I would say it out if your son is already majoring in engineering.
@PengPhils That actually brings up a very interesting point. I am unsure whether or not I’ll be entering the LLC related to my major for that same reason. My main concern with choosing a different LLC would be that I would be surrounded by people who I don’t share any classes with. Just making something up, if I major in chemistry or something, if I join the music LLC, I probably won’t encounter many other chemistry majors.
My question then becomes whether or not something like that matters.
@Bozusaki I think that is a somewhat real tradeoff, but you can always go hang out in the dorm of your major to study, do homework assignments, etc. And while you might not encounter as many, you still may find some. In an LLC of about 100 people that was completely unrelated to my major, I found 3 CS majors. I even had one as a homework partner while living there. If you value the diversity of subjects in your life, I think it will matter very little.
@PengsPhils Thanks so much for all of your help. Don’t really see another one that he fits with. We’ll ask the Healthy Living question when we visit in February:)