<p>My son (an incoming Freshman)will be housed in Russell "C" this year.
Can anyone offer a sense of what the culture's like in the Russell complex? It seems to be located in a pretty convenient spot on campus, but we never actually checked Russell out when we visited. Any information/insight you can offer would be great..</p>
<p>My D was in Russell C this past year and loved it! The building is is great shape, everything is new and spotless, they have big windows which let in plenty of light and air. The rooms aren’t air conditioned, but my D found that a fan worked beautifully. On the ground floor is the kitchen, a lounge, a quiet study room, the mailboxes and the laundry. The floors have double rooms with communal bathrooms. The rooms are set up as two little squares slightly offset from each other, which makes it seem like two rooms in one. Plenty of space and the beds raise very high for under bed storage. There is an RA and a Russell Fellow on each floor. The Russell fellow on my D’s floor was a wealth of information, support and fun. The kids are almost all honors students so they participate in things together like Dr. Munson’s study breaks and all of the honors activities. My D really enjoyed the sense of community that fostered. They have a lot of fun and work hard at the same time. My D will be residing in Brown this year with a bunch of people from Russell. I think your son will find a fun, supportive, warm atmosphere. The extra support of the Russell fellow is a huge, huge plus in my opinion. The only possibly negative thing I could say about Russell is that last year there was construction going on in the parking area on Haimes (sp?) Street, which annoyed me much more than it did my D. A small suggestion would be for your son to confirm the locations of his classes ahead of time so he knows what route he will travel. Russell is allllll the way on the end of campus and my D got severely lost a few times last year, resulting in raving calls to Mom at a time when I did not need the stress. Good luck!!!</p>
<p>Thanks, Zoosermom. Your information on Russel and your daughters’ exoperiences there is really helpful, particularly your advice regarding class locations- now that my son knows where he’ll be living, the next step will be to determine where his classes are located; if they’re a relatively long distance from Russell we’re planning to bring his bike; if not, the bike won’t make the trip from CT to UD and he can “hoof it”.<br>
Thanks again/hope your daughter has a good year at UD!</p>
<p>rross184- I am interested in your S’s decision to attend U Del and why he would choose U Del over U Conn with the obviously cheaper in state tuition. U Del and U Conn are two schools that my D is considering and we would be OOS for both. We have visited U Del which we found very impressive, but have not visited U Conn and were considering whether to do so. </p>
<p>I’m curious what drew your S to U Del vs. U Conn. Can you help me to differentiate these two schools? Thanks!</p>
<p>pamom59- First, let me say that as a lifeflong resident of CT UCONN is a =n excellent school, and it’s improved significantly in the past 10-15 years; it’s also a great education forthe money, particularly for IS. That being said, while my son applid, he really had no interest in attending. Let me offer some details that may help your day-ughter-
As is expected, a large proportion of the kids in our towns’ HS attend UCONN- in our case, over 200 kids from my son’s graduating class will be going to Storrs. My son’s relatively mature for his age (</p>
<p>pamom59- sorry… (as mature as an a8 year-old male can appear), and he’s stated mny times that he enjoyed his High School experience, he wasn’t interested in repeating it in college. Turns out less than 10 kids from his class will be attending UD (all of whom were higher-ranked in his class than he was).
Second criteria was the area the schools are in- I understand you’ve that never been to UCONN, but believe me- Storrs, CT couldn’t possible be more differennt from Newark, DE in terms of diversity, vibrancy, choices, and overall college-town feel. Storrs is -literally- an isolated, sleepy farm town in eastern CT - the nearest mall’s 30 minutes away by highway travel. There’s almost nothing out there except the school itself. Really.
Third criteria that swayed my son is more subjective, but he truly got that “feel” when he visited UD. We had visited a number of college campuses by the time we got to see UD, and while all of them were very nice in various ways, none of them seemed to “grab” him.
After touring the UD campus (with an excellent Bue Hen Anmbassador) and talking to various people while we were walking aroind, I could see it on his face that he was connecting, and he ultimately said: “you know, I really like it here. I can really see myself going to school here”. So, despite his having to participate in covering some of the cost of his education, he chose UD over UCONN, hands down.</p>
<p>rross- thanks very much for this information. It is really helpful to me. I had heard that U Conn was isolated- but didn’t realize you had to drive 30 minutes to a mall! </p>
<p>I hear what you are saying about not wanting to attend college with 200 of his high school classmates…I wonder how the experience at U Conn is for OOS kids who don’t start with that network- and whether it is hard for them to break into the social scene. At UD 65% of the kids are OOS so that should not be an issue at all.</p>
<p>My D also felt very comfortable on our visit to the UD campus but since it was summer we need to go back in the fall to get a better feel. </p>
<p>Hope that your son has a great freshman year at UD and go Blue Hens!</p>
<p>pamom-
The (many) kids I know who attend UCONN almost universally say that the experience is positive, but it’s really all about what you make of it…any school the size of UCONN invariably has a lot of activities, events, clubs, etc. but at UCONN, you have to make a concerted effort to seek things out for yourself. The kids also say that the school’s big, so you can choose to “hang” with the same kids you did in HS, or you can minimize your contact with other town kids and make new friends. Some kids maintain the same HS social circle at UCONN they had in HS, others don’t. I’d tell your daughter that even though UCONN’s heavily comprised of IS kids, the overall culture isn’t so insular that an OOS student would have trouble finding friends… as long as she’s willing to spend the energy to do so.</p>
<p>thanks rross!</p>
<p>We are not instate Conn or Del (NY) but I’d echo most of the things said by rross regarding the campus of UConn being remote and having no college town or stores nearby. We arrived early and had to eat in a Subway just outside of the campus which seemed to be one of only two or three really basic, boring places to go. Main Street in Newark is heaven in comparison. And one more thing although it might be subjective: we found the campus at UConn to be overly compacted and claustrophobic with lots of taller buildings jammed close together chockabloc and almost toweringly forbidding with little green space between them. By comparison, the buildings at UDel were built in a lower scale, fewer stories and were more spread out, offering a more relaxing pleasant campus experience and with more trees and more green in the Green.</p>
<p>Back on topic, the culture is pretty variable in most dorms. When I was a freshman, the kids in the Russell complex mostly got ****faced drunk all the time (my floor especially). Have to say, it was a pretty great freshman year. The next year, however, my former RA told me that the kids were pretty much the exact opposite and didn’t party a whole lot. One thing that remains pretty consistent though is that there seems to be a pretty strong sense of community among floormates in Russell.</p>