<p>I'm 100% going to stanford this year and I wanted to get a jumpstart on housing. In your opinion, which dorms are the party dorms and which ones are more laid back??</p>
<p>you can't choose your specific freshman dorm, you can only rank your preferences about categories of dorms:
- all-frosh, co-ed
- all-frosh, single sex floors
- 4-class
- theme (all 4 class): ujamaa (african-american), okada (asian-american), muwekmah (american indian), zapata (chicano)
- frosoco (freshman sophomore college), 2 class, must apply to get in
- sle (structured liberal education), 4 class, no application but 90% or so acceptance based on your stanford application if you rank it first</p>
<p>of these, coed all-frosh is considered the most social and most people rank it first (and single sex floors second). some survey done by stanford a few years ago also demonstrated that students in all-frosh dorms are the happiest. since okada and zapata are in wilbur and stern, they are very close to all-frosh dorms, unlike uj and muwekmah (although muwekmah is on the row and thus close to the nightlife, plus i hear it has really nice rooms compared to freshman residences). some people don't like the self-segregation aspect of the theme dorms, however. frosoco is pretty far away from stuff in west campus, so is a pretty insular community and has a not very social reputation, but has nice rooms. 4-class dorms look the same inside as all-frosh, but are considered quieter (they might be nice because you can get the wise advice of older students). there is another thread on sle you can look at if you are interested in that, i can't sum it all up here, but if you do sle you may get into all-frosh alondra or a 4-class east flo dorm, neither are considered as social as other dorms but alondra is probably more social.</p>
<p>to clarify, you can rank specific theme dorms, frosoco, and sle, but you can't rank specific all-frosh or four-class dorms on the housing app. you get something that might look like this:</p>
<p>1) all-frosh coed
2) all-frosh single sex floors
3) 4-class
4) zapata
5) sle
6) okada
...etc...</p>
<p>although you can't choose specific dorms, there is a fairly good description of them at unofficial.stanford.edu (under home life). the biggest all-frosh dorm is branner, with 10% of freshmen, while gavilan and paloma (in west flomo) are the smallest; gavilan has around 50 people. all-frosh dorms in stern and wilbur are somewhere in the middle.</p>
<p>When do u sign up for SLE? I'd love to do SLE but did not indicate so on my application. Okada sounds pretty swell too... Asian food every day lol. Can you describe a little more about the food, social life, and rooming options at SLE and Okada? Many thanks.</p>
<p>well, okada doesn't have its own dining hall, it's part of the wilbur dorm cluster so okada people go to wilbur dining like everyone else. sle is part of flomo, and eats at flomo dining hall, which is smaller than wilbur and stern and is closed on fridays and saturdays. i'm not too picky of an eater, just vegetarian, so i'm not sure i can say which dining hall is the best; i think that wilbur, flomo, and stern are all of comparable quality, and all have plenty of vegetarian options and a rotating selection of ethnic foods (thai, mexican, etc.) i do think wilbur has the best asian food and stern has the best mexican (currently stern is mexican-food themed, flomo is mediterranean). </p>
<p>if you're visiting campus, i really recommend checking out the different dorms and dining halls and seeing what you like. most people will tell you not to do sle, theme dorms, frosoco, or 4-class, but most people haven't lived in any of those so might not really know what they are talking about (i am one of these "most people"). i think sle is pretty well covered in the sle thread, so read that if you are considering it. you will get the housing app in june or around then, and rank your options (including sle) as i described in the above posts.</p>
<p>rooming is about the same in sle, okada, and all-frosh dorms: you + random roommate + decent sized room with 2 beds, drawers, desks, and closet. flomo rooms (sle), wilbur rooms (okada) and stern rooms are all about the same size, as far as i can tell. each hall has a bathroom, some have coed sinks (wilbur i think) but showers and toilets are always separate. lagunita is infamous for tiny rooms that were meant to be singles, while branner (huge all-frosh dorm) supposedly had large rooms with sinks. frosoco has 2 room doubles, so you have a roommate but you have much more space. </p>
<p>i can't say much for social life, all-frosh dorms are known to be a bit wilder than other dorms, but i'm sure okada and sle have very close-knit if less party-focused environments that might suit some better.</p>
<p>Are the SLE and Frosoco dorms single sex floors or coed?</p>
<p>they are both coed. there really aren't that many places with single sex floors, and those that do often have one male floor, one female, and one coed. it really doesn't make much of a difference, most people wander around the dorm and don't just stick to their floor when hanging out with friends and stuff, and since the bathrooms are separate i really don't think it matters. while the frosoco dorm is just for frosoco, sle people are all in eastflo, but there are non-sle people living in eastflo as well (mostly upperclassmen, except for all-frosh alondra). frosoco is a pretty far bike ride from freshmen dorms, the row, libraries, etc., while sle is a lot closer but on a hill that is somewhat annoying to bike up. frosoco does have really nice rooms, though.</p>