I got into Madison through EA and I was wondering which would be better, going with a random roommate or trying to find someone to room with. I have no idea on how to go about finding a roommate since I don’t have a Facebook and I have very little desire to get one. If I went with a random roommate would I be able to contact them before move in day so we would be able to coordinate who brings what. I’m just oddly anxious. Thanks for any sort of help in advance!
I have an older child that went random and it worked out fine. On the other hand my younger went the Facebook route and it went poorly. I think my younger student was just unlucky. A lot will depend on how flexible of a person you are. Have you shared a room before? Going through the accepted students group using Facebook can be beneficial because you can discuss important matters in detail. Do you go to bed at 11pm or do you work typically until 2am? Will you mute your phone at night or will you have going off on full volume for every text and Snapchat? Would it bother you if the room is messy? Overnight guests? Do you plan to study in the room? Do you wake up the first time or the 10th time your alarm goes off? If you chose a roommate you can initiate conversations with multiple people on Facebook and decide on a best fit for yourself.
If you feel strongly about lights, noise, guests or neatness, I would suggest finding and talking to potential roommates. They will make you sign a roommate agreement with the RA in the beginning of the year, but it is not enforceable. Good Luck!
It is a housefellow, not an RA (resident assistant) at Res Halls. Dorms are divided into houses, hence the name. A house can be an entire building (Kronshage), more than one floor or a floor of a dorm building. Long ago UW stopped with roommate questionnaires as they found random assignments worked just as well.
Think about it- how would you answer questions? According to the person you think you are, your parents think you are, the person you want to be, the person you want to room with. That potential roommate will be doing the same thing. The slob may hope living with a neatnik will reform them (no).
You also need to figure out which dorm area and dorm type you would like. There is a great variety in locations and buildings on the UW campus. Before trying to find any roommate research the dorms. Many variables. My friends and I in the same major preferred very different settings. Your future roommate will have several things in common- you both prefer the same dorms.
There will never be a perfect match. One of you may need to be quiet, will need to not have that visitor, keep the mess to their area… You are not choosing your friend, you do not need to be friends but peacefully coexist. In fact, it can be nice to not depend on your roommate for your social life. You will learn a lot about yourself that first year of college once you are away from home and family. You and any roommate will change. I had one from a farm and she was much less an early riser after being away at college, I learned a bit about rural life. So many other experiences.
Do not worry about it.
@wis75 - how strong is “house” culture in the UW res. halls? Do they have traditions, competitions, house dinners, parties, that sort of thing? Does it vary by dorm? If your kid is looking for a strong cohesive “house” is it better to look into some dorms over others, or maybe choose one of the learning communities or . . . . ?
@JBSstillflying While it may vary by dorm, my son’s experience as a recent grad was that his floor – which was his “house” – was a tight group through first semester, but after the first couple days of first year activities, there was not structured “house vs. house” stuff. They still went to dinner, games, events etc. together, and the house fellow kept them posted on things to do, but it was not formal.
Are you able to stay with your house past the first year? Do you get priority in the housing lottery for this?
I think I read 94% of the housing on campus is devoted to freshman. So you can certainly stay in the dorms, but the overwhelming majority move into off campus housing.
@jbsstillflying UW dorms are occupied mostly by first years; a smaller percentage of sophomores and juniors may stay “on campus” particularly as they get priority for dorms and can get into the newer ones like Smith etc. but most students move off campus after first year. There is a robust market of furnished and unfurnished apartments all around campus, ranging from deluxe buildings with roof top pools to grungy converted houses. My kid moved off campus into a furnished apt as a sophomore with several friends and it was actually a bit cheaper than the dorm, though he chose modestly and there were certainly pricier options.
The house structure at UW is really just UW’s name for orientation groups and RAs – a way to connect and shrink the first year experience under the leadership and guidance of an upper class student who lives on the same floor. My kid did not report any enduring personality etc. about his “house” which was a single floor in Sellery. They went to football games together etc. and stayed friends through the first year but didn’t really stay in touch much after that.
As a recent grad, he loved his experience at UW – it was phenomenal academically, and he loved the smorgasbord of opportunities.
Post #7 has it- the same as years ago and much like eons ago. No culture I ever heard of. Fall activities are arranged but few obligations (dorm move in day there usually is an evening house meeting- parents should be gone by then). Some students may be interested in Res Halls “learning communities”- available for 1 in 5 dorm residents per the website. Freshmen tend to do things with people on their floor initially until they meet others in classes and establish habits.
You do not stay “with” a house, you live in a house. The house is a physical unit comprised of rooms for maybe 50 to 70 students depending on the dorm. This varies because the physical layout has much variety. Kronshage consists of 8 different buildings with three floors each, each building is a house unit. Some dorms are one floor. Some may have two floors for a house. Each house has one housefellow. Houses are named after people from UW history, but students may pay little attention to that- except for Kronshage it was always easier to note you lived on 3rd, 4th… floor as most won’t know the house names. There’s interesting info and history on the Res Halls web site. Returning students (a minority) do get choices if they choose the same dorm. But that’s a year from now.
Admitted students will want to explore their options. A lot to figure out for location, building type, rooms… Pros and cons for every place. Everyone has different likes- parents do not always know what their child wants. Res Halls keeps up with maintenance and no scuzzy dorms to my knowledge.
^ It doesn’t appear, then, that UW-Madison has a “house culture” the way that a few other, smaller uni’s do. Hard to implement perhaps in a large state university with readily-available options off-campus. Website says that over 90% live on campus their first year and “many” returning students also choose to do so. Anyone able to estimate that percentage?
Also, looks like beginning in the fall of 2019 new incoming students will be required to purchase a meal plan (returning students not required to do so).This is an unfortunate change from prior years, although the meal plan is such a money maker for schools that it’s surprising UW-Madison didn’t enforce this already. Still - Boo.
@JBStillFlying Meal plan for 1st years was a bargain --it was a la carte, at a subsidized rate, so you only paid for what you bought. The meal plan applies to all the cafes and dining halls on campus – everything from Gordon to Bascom ice cream in Union South. Gordon even delivers pizza – so students can get their late night study breaks on their meal plan.
@Midwestmomofboys - oh good. a la carte is much better than a fixed swipe system which is where uni’s really tend to make the money. I can understand requiring a plan for food planning purposes. Always loved the options at UW. We toured that new dorm - dejope? - and were blown away by the dining hall.
There is no longer an ‘a la carte’ option for 2018 forward (except for those grandfathered - in).
@madison85 Can you clarify? I had looked at the current plans, and understood there are three tiers of plans, reflecting different average number of meals per week on campus. The FAQs indicate it is still a la carte – you pay for what you get rather than a fixed price per meal, regardless of what you get. Am I misunderstanding something? I understand the “tiered” system is new.
The three tiers are just varying amounts of money the parents are willing to deposit in the food account. While my freshman is still living in the dorm, she will receive a 30% discount off list price on items she buys in the cafeteria. They tally up everything individually such as fruit, sandwich and drinks. I would receive an email if the account was to drop below a threshold I set. They can also purchase meals at the Union for full price and the money will come out of the same account. My daughter does this frequently because she prefers the food there.
She will most likely have a balance in the account when she moves off for sophomore year. The money doesn’t expire and she can use it a both the Union and the cafeterias, but she won’t be eligible for the 30% cafeteria discount. You can not change the tier after the first couple of weeks of school, but you can always add money.
Thank you for the thorough explanation @wheatonmom, I see it IS described as an a la carte plan:
https://www.housing.wisc.edu/dining/residents/
The big changes with the new system are that the ending balance in the food account is not refunded and a student cannot opt out of a plan altogether.
My kids spend/spent about $700 - $900 per academic year on dorm food so I would not have been happy with the $1400 minimum for Tier 1 (youngest is grandfathered in to the old plan which does include the 30% discount off stated prices, with no minimum Wiscard deposit required and ending balance refunded in May/June).
Even if the meal plan was completely optional, we’d still load money on our kid’s card so that he always has options. Of course, he’d go to college with a credit card as well - plastic is plastic - but it’s easier to budget (for us) if loaded in advance. As long as we can choose the minimum plan and add funds to it if needed - I’m cool. We do this for another child on a similar system. At the end of the semester she just re-loads as necessary to get her through finals. If she runs out a day or two early, that’s when she pulls out the CC.
There’s even an advantage to compelling students to use their dining halls as it encourages community. Totally understand that the option to eat non-dorm food is of benefit to a student who is quite acclimated, but for new families this new system is probably a plus on net and brings peace of mind. Of course, our son eats exactly ONE meal a day - in the evening - and it’s a big one. Dorm living and dining hall life are going to be quite an adjustment regardless of where he ends up.
It’s the “single swipe” plans that are a rip-off. Of course, the economist in me thinks that Madison wouldn’t have done this switch if there wasn’t a revenue-enhancing component to it. Many students will still prefer off-campus options, as @Madison85’s kids have done; that can potentially add $500/student added to the bottom line.
@JBStillFlying From a student’s experience, there are much fewer students who return for a second year in the dorms—although I can’t offer any legit numbers, it certainly felt like the majority moved off-campus, and the upperclassmen (and transfers) are mostly concentrated in Ogg, Merit, and the single room dorms like Barnard and Adams/Tripp. By junior/senior year, there are very, very few students who live in the dorms. It’s much cheaper to live off-campus, and the extra freedom and space is very desirable.
In regards to the new meal plan, the tier system seems like a painfully obvious way of gaming new and naive parents into selecting the higher tiers. I ate every meal in the dining halls in my freshman year, and I’d estimate that $1400 was the upper limit of what I spent over the year. There’s absolutely no reason to select the higher tiers, especially since you only have to deposit a minimum—just pick the lowest tier and add some more money on top if needed.
At least the money is transferable to next year—when the plan was initially proposed, you had to forfeit the money at the end of the year.
That new three tier system is a reversion to my plan of eons ago. Back then we had three tier choices and were issued the number of $10 cardboard cards specific to the chosen tier- there was a selling and buying of them among students who had/ needed extras. Current card format will be different thanks to much greater computer use availablity. The deal is that anyone can pay full cash price but using the meal plan saves money per item and is only available to Res Halls residents. I suspect the new tiered plans will make it easier on the Res Halls dining budget- predictability.
Don’t worry about second year housing. Once on campus and living in the dorms a few months the students are savvy about options. As a parent I had been concerned but it all works out very well. My son spent two years in the dorms because we parents required it and since he was under 18 (gifted- ahead in grades) no management would allow him even if we did cosign (cosigning was required for older students). Parents- do not make the decision about paying for an apartment in later years now. The current campus culture makes apartment living work well. The list of rules from son’s places was quite comprehensive- many covering things you wouldn’t see elsewhere, such as noise concerns. There are also Madison city rules that protect tenants.
So, the consensus seems to be to take the lowest tier of food if at all? For those that don’t use it, how do you track food costs for 529 purposes? CC receipts?