hi! i’m applying to wellesley ed and want to know more about the small halls. there isn’t a lot online about lake house or dower and i want to know about the rooms/community and stuff. i know on the rez life page says that dower is a tight-knit kinda place with big closets. any other info?
Dower has a really nice common room, and it’s so small that everyone knows everyone so you absolutely get to know a lot of upperclassmen. Only problem is that it’s on the edge of East Side, which means that it’s a fifteen minute trek one way to the Academic Quad :’( but it’s pretty close to the math/science classrooms so that’s pretty nice. The rooms have hardwood floors and it’s pretty big, but there have been reports of termites (an old wooden barn = bugs). I really like the common room, though, and it’s a popular place for people to hang out and for clubs to hold meetings in. The New Dorms are really close and Bates Dining Hall is maybe a three minute walk away, and it’s also the second best dining hall on campus so…
Lake House is close to Tower, and has an amazing view of the lake. They also have a really cute library. I’ve only visited a few times but I can see why upperclassmen are upset that first years get access to such a nice dorm this year. There’s only a few first years, though, so during orientation it does get a bit lonely and you’ll have to go to other dorms to make friends. Also, the closest dining hall is Tower, which has… unique food. The rooms are definitely bigger than Tower, which isn’t saying a lot.
My daughter lived in Dower for 2 years (first and soph) and loved it. It was a tight knit community and she made good friends there. She loved the long walk to her humanities classes–it forced her to exercise in the winter, and kept her from gaining weight. The living spaces are also larger in Dower–you have two double or single bedrooms on either side of a work/study room, so people can work late without disturbing their roommates. But the carpet in the hallway was nasty (she graduated in 2017, so maybe they’ve replaced it?) and the space was generally very run down.
I was actually kind of horrified when I first saw it, but she really liked the small community, so chose to live there again the next year.