<p>mountandog, not sure if you're still reading, but I just now saw your question you asked me in this thread. At U of T, it will depend which college you're talking about. At Vic, which is the one my D attends, that 90% figure for students living off-campus is absolutely inaccurate. That MAY be the case at some U of T colleges, but I don't know which ones. Which college gave you that number? As I said in my earlier post on this thread, Vic dorms house students from all years and as long as you maintain a certain gpa, you are allowed to remain in housing for all four years. Vic is known for being very close-knit, with many college based clubs and activities, drama and music groups, college based events and community service, etc. It's not exactly like the system at Yale but it is an excellent environment for kids who want a large urban university, with a small college feel.</p>
<p>until reading this thread I never looked at my experience in this light..
single sex dorm. house mother. RA on each floor. Dining room in the dorm, though I *think not open all the time. There was also a main dining hall.
Montclair State College circa - don't ask, don't tell.</p>
<p>A girl had her brother help carry a trunk to her room one Sunday and she was thrown out of the dorm for having a man in the building.
4 years later it was co-ed by room.</p>
<p>There is a NYTimes Select article in today's paper on Yale's plan to expand its residential college system. Here is a link to an article in the Yale Bulletin (Feb. 2007) "Yale to consider feasibility of adding two residential colleges":</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/opa/v35.n18/story2.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.yale.edu/opa/v35.n18/story2.html</a></p>
<p>NY Times education life article "The Residential Collage" takes a look at the impetus to create dynamic academic communities through the Oxbridge model of residential life for undergraduates at Cornell and other IHEs.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Its the philosophy that a big university need not alienate students from faculty and that a learning atmosphere will be better if students feel a sense of belonging to the campus, explains David C. Hardesty Jr., the departing president of West Virginia University, which last August opened the first new student residence to be built on the Morgantown campus since the 1960s. The residence, Lincoln Hall, provides 350 first-year students with their own multimedia theater, library, resident faculty members and seminars that fulfill general course requirements.</p>
<p>Its the idea that to improve in the classroom we have to improve outside the classroom, he says.</p>
<p>A rash of projects now under way, from Middlebury College in Vermont to Willamette University in Oregon, suggests the trend is expanding. At Cornell, in fact, Cook and Becker are only the first pieces of the $200 million West Campus Initiative; three more houses will be operating by 2010. Louisiana State will open its first residential college in the fall, and Michigan State its third. Vanderbilts $150 million campus-within-a-campus 10 houses, deans residence, dining center and public square should be ready in 2008.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
Santa Clara has Residential Learning Communities. Students have various things they do with their RLC including taking core course requirements, doing community service and participating in social events.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Iowa State has that also.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lc.iastate.edu/whatis.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.lc.iastate.edu/whatis.html</a></p>
<p>I haven't read the whole thread.</p>
<p>We have houses at the University of Chicago (but a little different from what the article describes). Dorms are split into houses which hold form 30-100+ students. Most houses are around 70 students. Each house has one or two RAs as well as Resident Heads, who are graduate students who live with their kids and pets in an apartment in the house. Resident Heads are not there to police students, but they provide tremendous help and support to students. There are house meetings once a week--not required, though most students attend. There are house study breaks three times a week, usually. There are house trips to restaurants, Six Flags, ice skating, an IMAX movie, to do community service, or whatever else. These are heavily subsidized. Every dorm has Resident Masters, who are senior professors who live with their families in a large apartment in the dorm. They host dinners, speakers, and very nice trips for students. Every house has a "house table" in a dining hall. Most students eat almost every meal at their house table. This is one of my favorite parts about the house system: you always eat at the same table with people you know. You always have a place to sit, and even if you aren't good friends with anyone who's in the dining hall, you can feel comfortable sitting and chatting with whoever is at your house table. Houses compete in IM sports and random other competitions. There is definite house loyalty, though some students do change houses if they decide they want to live in a different dorm (dorms all have very different personalities, so some students find a better fit after their first year). Many students at the U of C do move off campus which weakens the house system somewhat, but while you're in the dorms the house system is vital. It's an extremely important part of dorm life at the school.</p>
<p>Corranged: Take how you described what you like about the Chicago house system, and change a few facts: 90%+ of the students live in the same house all four years, there's a variety of room arrangements in each house so you are not effectively stuck in the same room for four years, each house has its own separate dining hall, and the houses sponsor academic courses and vibrant drama, film, and music clubs . . . and you have the Yale residential college system. Which works really well. </p>
<p>It's not surprising that other universities, including Chicago, have been trying to move in that direction, but there are just huge hurdles: Having enough dorm space, of the right size (not too big, not too small) and composition (a variety of room arrangements in each dorm), and enough dining halls. If you don't have that already, it's really expensive and inefficient to build it, and it's expensive to operate. I don't know what the new residential college Princeton is building is going to look like; I'd be interested to see. Even the last two colleges Yale built, in the 60s, are the least popular because of the lack of variety in rooms.</p>
<p>corranged,</p>
<p>The house table in the dining hall is one of the things my D is most looking forward to at U of C. She said she feels like there will never be that awkward "where do I sit, is it ok with the people sitting there?" moment, since all from the house are welcome. She has first hand experience having spent some time at school with her brother who graduated this year. I found that the U of C house system works without being overwhelming or all consuming. My S's friends (and ultimately his apartment mates) came from a healthy mix of kids in his house, kids in his ec's and kids he just met. He was one of the ones who moved off campus second year, but he lived with the same guys for the next 3 years, creating their own "house"!! There were 7 of them. But I do know that his loyalty to Rickert remained..even having spent only 1 year there.</p>
<p>Two notes on the freshman at Yale -
(i) even those living on Old Campus are segregated by college. For instance, all Branford freshman live in three (of six) entryways in Vanderbilt Hall and those entryways only house Branford freshman. The college afflilation begins immediately.
(ii) each year a few juniors are "annexed" out of their colleges and live on Old Campus.</p>
<p>One of the good things is that the many students who don't really desire a house system aren't overwhelmed by it. Good point, Runnersmom. Many students are neutral about the house system (though most like house tables, RHs, and study breaks) and wouldn't like if it were any more intense. </p>
<p>JHS, as I'm sure you know, the different building compositions attract different types of students, which thereby leads to certain (usually true) stereotypes about different houses' personalities. It makes the house system different from most schools where house personalities/stereotypes are built from student composition year-to-year. Shoreland houses will always be known as social. Maclean houses will always be mysterious and unknown. Snell will always be thought of as "weird" / hardcore about UChicago. The Yale system sounds great, of course.</p>
<p>Maclean House (there's only one) is the only one I've actually spent time in. It wasn't mysterious in the least. It seemed fairly normal and social. All singles, but lots of open doors and people in the halls and common areas. Lovely RH family. Great, huge institutional kitchen the kids can use. Nice spirit. But of all my daughter's friends, only one will live there as a third year, and maybe about a third lived there as second years. (The rest moved either off campus or to the Shoreland.) So it hasn't provided a lot of continuity.</p>
<p>I had wondered which dorm your daughter was in. Maclean is known as being a strange, mysterious house because it's small and away from campus. Most students wouldn't know where Maclean is on a map, for instance. In fact, I don't really know where it is. I know a couple of kids from there (no girls your daughter's year, though). It's a dorm that doesn't get much consideration by students who don't live there. Strange, but true. Students in the Shoreland, Max, Snell-Hitchcock, and BJ tend to stay in their dorms, become RAs, or move off campus. The other dorms are known as the "unknowns" because they're all small and relatively isolated (these include Broadview, which is by the way an old "gentleman's hotel" near the Shoreland with all singles with private bathrooms--I wonder why ;), Maclean, and Breck which is a pretty small dorm a ten minute walk from campus).</p>